Four years of Ezzy: Year 1

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Since I am on a photo kick, it seems like the right time to do a post with photos of Ezzy over the years in honor of her fourth birthday.

We will start with her first year.

The day Esmé was born is kind of a big blur. She arrived around 7 am–weighing 6 pounds and 3 ounces. I held her for only a few moments before they realized something was wrong. I did see her in the isolated nursery before she was transferred to the NICU, but I didn’t take any pictures…and, honestly, I barely remember that part.

This is what I remember best from the day she was born. Esmé limp and sleeping in the NICU–the oxygen, IV, NG tube (through her mouth), and monitors all making me afraid to touch her.

By the time we arrived they had already examined her thoroughly…as we looked at her they explained that she had low tone, poor breathing, a heart abnormality, a murmur, bilateral hydronephrosis. They had measured every inch of her and pronounced that she had wide-set eyes, proportionally large hands, low set ears, blah blah blah blah.

What didn’t get marked down in her hospital record was that once she woke up she showed off her beautiful, knowing eyes, or that her tiny body felt so relaxed and loving in my arms. Or her perfect hair.

Once she came home she ate very little, vomited all the time, and grew very slowly. But she was very sweet and patient. She smiled early and gave the sense that she was laughing at us all the time.

2 Weeks

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of her. It is four days before she had cardiac and respiratory arrest due to aspiration pneumonia. When she was in the hospital and we weren’t sure she would live, I printed this photo out to remind myself of her smile–and to show all of her caregivers what she was like.

Because what they saw was this (this is after she came off the vent–I didn’t take a single picture of her on the vent):

On the left is her two weeks into tube feeding her. She is just over 4 months old. You can already see the difference tube-feeding is making. On the right is when soon after she started turning the pages in her board books while I read to her.

7 Months

4 Months

Around 9 months Esmé started having what we later learned were seizures. She would shake, and then sleep…they were short and we were told that they were not seizures.