Amelia Park Berg

We had a baby! It was only three months ago, but it seems like forever. This sweet little girl, Amelia, was born on January 30, 2012 and it has been one crazy ride for sure!

To somewhat explain my long departure from blogging and update friends who may have received Anthony's very benign email announcement that the baby had been born and "everyone was doing well", I will give a little detail on her delivery. I have found more than a few people have not known what happened and wondered why I dropped off of the face of the earth or even thought they had offended me because they hadn't heard from me. Not so, just trying to keep my head above water. :)

I went into the hospital with complications on January 11th. Our doctors here in Rockwall suspected a rupture was happening and wanted to deliver the baby right away. That would have meant a 33 week old baby, which made us really nervous. After a great deal of prayer and a priesthood blessing, we decided to request a transfer to Presbyterian Dallas where we would at least have access to a NICU if the baby required it. After more tests in Dallas, the doctors concluded that I had a rare condition called placenta percreta. I won't give details, but just Google it if you are interested. In short, it was very dangerous and I ended up staying in the hospital to be monitored while we let the baby grow as long as possible inside of me. We are so glad we transferred to Dallas, though. We are fairly certain that the inspiration to change hospitals saved my life and possibly Amelia's. Surgery without my percreta diagnosis would have been a mess.

So January 30th was my goal date and we were so happy to make the date without any emergencies. The surgery was difficult, but we survived so all is well. Amelia spent just 2 days in the NICU. I was so worried about having a 36 week old baby and asked to be awake for her delivery before they went into the more extensive part of my surgery. I will never forget my first sight of a very tiny, but healthy looking baby girl! She was 5 pounds and 13 ounces but you wouldn't have known it by listening to her strong healthy cry & seeing her sweet cheeks.

I spent the first 24 hours in the ICU because of the mass transfusion I had received. It was a strange day knowing I had a baby somewhere in the hospital but not being with her. The sweet nurses from the antipartum floor where I did three weeks of bed rest brought me some pictures of her to hold so I just sat there staring at them. On February 1, after my release from ICU, I was wheeled down to hold my little girl. I'm so glad Anthony took this picture because I barely remember this. I mostly remember feeling really bad so this picture paints a different scene. :)

This is Anthony's finger with her feet. So tiny!!

Amelia's birth was a whirlwind that we will not forget. People in our community and our family jumped to help us immediately and we managed to keep things together through a crazy time. I think we had six straight weeks of someone living with us. Three before her birth and three after. While I was on bed rest, I was blessed to have a lot of visitors. Really, about every time I got a little lonely I would look up and someone would be there. I think of the three weeks I was there before the surgery I only had a couple of days without a visitor. Those were lonely days missing my family and I was grateful for every visit. I kept a log of all of the people who served us during this time and I was a little overwhelmed when I sat down to start writing thank you notes...there were almost 40 people to thank for meals, child care, gifts, visits to the hospital, flowers, care packages, books...it goes on and on. One of my friends put it nicely when she visited one day and saw my room full of gifts and flowers. She said, "This is the next best thing to attending your own funeral!" :) We certainly know we are loved!

I am recovering as well as possible and I'm happy to be able to sit at the computer comfortably now so I can get busy documenting our family's life again!