The Biggest Winner

Well, I did it...I passed the 6 pound mark! At my doctor's appointment on Friday, I weighed in at 6 lbs, 4 oz and had gained 6 ounces in just 1 week. That now puts me at the 20th percentile for weight.

It was a good thing that we had a doctor's appointment scheduled, though, because since Thursday evening, my poor little belly hasn't been feeling very good. Overall I'm feeling ok, but I have some painful gas and diarrhea. To try to remedy the problem, Mom's going to take it easy on the dairy, so I can take it easy on my daire aire.

Yesterday, I went to church for the first time! I must admit, however, that I slept through most of the service. After church, Mom, Dad, and I went home and did what you're supposed to do on Sunday afternoons - we took a nice long nap! (We learned that from Grandpa Johnson.)

We're home!!

After spending just 6 days in the Special Care Nursery, I got to go home last Wednesday, the 17th!! I had successfully passed all of my tests (everything from the bilirubin test to the carseat test) and was deemed ready to start my new life at home with Mom and Dad!

We've been home for a week now and Mom and Dad are learning to adjust from a life of "Bed Rest" to "No Rest." Actually, that's not really true. I've been sleeping really well, especially at nights, and have been really easy to care for so far.

Mom and Dad have been recovering well, too. Mom has actually lost 22 pounds in 2 weeks (of course, I was almost 6 pounds of that). And you'll be glad to know that Mom's gestational carpal tunnel syndrome is completely gone and her blood pressure has returned to normal. HOORAH!!

One of the first things that I did when I got home was took my rightful place in the cradle, claiming it back from Zoli. He has taken my arrival very well and has since found a comfy sleeping spot for himself underneath the cradle.

Here are some pictures of me enjoying my cradle:





I had my first Well Baby visit at the pediatricians office on Friday and had gained 4 ounces after just 2 days of being home! That puts me at 5 pounds, 14 ounces now, which is quite an improvement since I had dropped down to 5 pounds, 5 ounces in the hospital. I'm still only at the 5th percentile for my weight, but I'm eating really well, getting better at breastfeeding, and hope to be over the 6 pound mark at my next doctor's appointment this Friday. (By the way, I'm at the 50th percentile for my height.)



My Uncle Mike came to visit me once I was at home and took this picture of me on his camera phone. And it's not gas...it's a smile!

Hoorah for grandmothers!! Gram came to visit me while I was still in the hospital and then the minute she got on the plane to go home, Grammie came to visit! I loved it when they fed me and snuggled with me! They sure helped Mom and Dad out a lot and we all hope they come back soon! (Check out the Frankenstein buttons on the side of my head in these photos. "We've created a monster!!!" But I sure am a cute monster.)

And finally, here are some pictures with me snuggling with Daddy. I am his little girl afterall. :)

The story behind my name..."Kairos"

Kairos Elizabeth Johnson Rawert

The ancient Greeks had two words for time, both of which appear in the New Testament. The first was "chronos" which is man-made time. It is the seconds, minutes, days, and years that are measured systematically by a clock or calendar. This notion of time permeates our western culture today. The second word the Greeks used for time was "kairos" which is God's time. It is the time in which God acts and moves. It is the right or opportune time as chosen by God Himself. It is God's appointed time in which His purposes are fulfilled.


Mom and Dad's lesson in embracing kairos all started 3 years ago in September of 2005 when they started to "try to have a baby." The timing would be perfect, they thought. The baby would come in the early summer of 2006, just as Dad was finishing up a school year and Mom had completed all of her graduate coursework, leaving only her dissertation research left to get her Ph.D. So they tried to have a baby that month - but no such luck. So they tried the next month - and still nothing. So they tried the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month - which brought them to September of 2006 - and still nothing. In chronos time, a year seems like a long time to try to have a baby. And yet it turned out that Mom and Dad would have to wait even longer before they were blessed with a LittleBit; 2 1/2 long years passed by before the timing was truly perfect.


Those 2 1/2 years of waiting were very tough, but over the course of that chronos, God taught Mom and Dad a great deal about kairos. He taught them how to surrender their plans and calendars to God, have patience, trust in His will for their lives, and believe in the fact that God's timing is always better than our man-made timing. Mom and Dad also learned that while you can "try NOT TO HAVE a baby", you can't "try TO HAVE a baby", because as Christian author Margaret Brownley states, "Conception is truly a kairos moment."


With our limited human perspective, our idea of perfect timing is often flawed. Only God, with his infinte knowledge and eternal perspective can know what the right time is. He is the God of everything; He is the God of time. The Bible is full of reminders of this truth:


"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." -Proverbs 16:9


"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." -Jeremiah 29:11


"He makes all things beautiful in His time." -Ecclesiastes 3:11


It is tempting for us to plan out all of the details of our lives, leaving no room for God to enter in. James warns those who fall into this trap by saying, "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow...Instead you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that" (James 4:13-15). It was only once Mom and Dad stopped counting days and planning out the details 9 months in advance that God could work in their lives. God wanted to teach them how to detach themselves from the chronos that controlled them and instead, embrace an attitude of kairos that delights in knowing that things will happen, "if it is the Lord's will."


So according to chronos time, I was 2 1/2 years late. But thanks to God, I'm a kairos baby, and that makes me right on time!

I'M A GIRL!!

It looks like I tricked the majority of you voters who participated in Decision 2008 who thought all along that I was a boy. Gotcha!! Oh yeah, and to the two voters who just so happened to correctly vote "Girl" as my sex as well as correctly vote "before September 30th" as my birthday, don't think that I didn't notice that you did so sometime last week before I could get internet access to close the polls. Nice try.

My parents named me Kairos Elizabeth Johnson Rawert but you can call me "Kaira" (which rhymes with Tyra or Myra) or "Rose". And, of course, I'll always be LittleBit (which sure sounds a lot like Elizabeth, doesn't it? Coincidence?)

Look out world - I'm born!!

So, following Mom's doctor appointment last Monday, the doctors agreed that her blood pressure issue was serious enough that pre-term delivery was necessary. So that evening, 4 weeks before the due date, Mom and Dad packed their bags and headed to the hospital to have me! And after 60 hours of induced labor and 1.5 hours of pushing, I eventually made my entrance into the world at 7:18am on Thursday, September 11th, 2008. We were all pretty exhausted from the long process (look at how horrible we look in these pictures!) but are recovering quite well now.

At birth, I weighed 5 pounds, 11.1 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. Since I was a premie (which is short for PREMIUM, not PREMATURE), I have been staying in the special care nursery in the hospital with the two other coolest babies in the hospital. All of the "regular" babies have a different room which I hear is pretty lame. Overall, I'm quite healthy; I've even been showing off the excellent capabilities of my lungs whenever they take my clothes off to change my diaper. There are just a couple of concerns that the doctors have that are making them hold me hostage here until I get all better:

I was born with a pretty large bruise on the top of my head which was really sore for the first couple of days. It is healing up nicely now, though, and you can barely even tell that I spent 2 days banging my head up against an unripe cervix.

A few days ago, I started turning into a pumpkin. Yep, like most premies - I've developed a mild case of jaundice. Apparently the best way to treat it is to strip me down to my diaper and put me on the beach for the day. It seemed to work because my color looks much better now! I'm convinced that a day in the sun can cure pretty much anything.

I started out as quite a poor eater. Whoever knew that the comment, "your baby sucks!" would be a compliment?!? After my first day of life, I was eating so little that the doctors put a feeding tube in me to feed me whatever I didn't eat on my own from the bottle. And although I wasn't quite as cute with a tube sticking out of my nose, I have to admit that I really liked sleeping cuddled up next to Mom while getting fed through a tube. Afterall, that's what'd I'd been doing for 8 whole months!! I'm eating MUCH better now, though. They only had to keep the tube in me for a day before I gained enough sleep and energy to feed from a bottle for an entire half hour. They keep upping the amount of food I'm supposed to eat, and at this point, I'm eating MORE than that (I'm quite the overachiever)! I especially like it when Mom brings me in breastmilk that she's pumped. It just tastes WAY better than that formula stuff they give me...probably because she keeps eating chocolate pudding and cheesecake from the hospital cafeteria. YUMMY! Mom and I are now working on breastfeeding and as soon as we both master that, we get to go home! It looks like we may even be out of here as early as Wednesday!

Hey Mom - keep on chillin'!

Grammie and Grandpa came up for another visit this past week and apparently Mom thought it would be a fun idea to show them the hospital - twice - while they were visiting. Yep - Mom is still having trouble with her blood pressure; it keeps fluctuating all over the place, from 115/78 to 160/115. So, the doctors admitted her to the hospital twice last week to run more tests to make sure that I am doing just fine (I'm doing great!!) and that she doesn't have preeclampsia. Again, thankfully, the problem seems isolated to the high blood pressure. Mom has now been put on Level 3 bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy to keep her chillin'. That means that she's only allowed to get up off of the couch to pee! Don't feel too bad for her. Since she's pregnant and is drinking a gallon of water a day (doctor's orders!), she still gets to get up to stretch her legs about 20 times every day.

Please pray for good health for my mom. The doctors say that the minute she shows any other signs of preeclampsia, they'll induce labor and get me out of here (delivery is the only cure for gestational hypertension). We all want to keep me in here for a few more weeks, though, if possible, so I'll have nice healthy lungs. I've gotta be able to scare that cat out of my cradle somehow!

Surprise Baby Shower!!

Mom and Dad recently took an Infant Safety class to learn how to perform infant CPR and what to do when a baby is choking. Each person got a plastic baby mannequin to practice the procedures . Throughout the class, though, as the instructor was demonstating the techniques, the mannequin's head kept falling off, which was pretty disconcerting. It was especially disturbing because Mom and Dad could never get a straight answer for what they're supposed to do if MY head ever falls off!!!

Surprise!!! Mom and Dad's Bible study group threw them a surprise baby shower which was so much fun! We got to play some really fun games and I got lots of clothes, bottles, and toys! They had even made me a tasty cake that said, "Welcome to the world, LittleBit!"

In one of the games, everyone had to drink apple juice out of a baby bottle. It's harder than it looks, isn't it, Dad?!?!

Mom killed the competition during the diaper changing game. She changed that doll's diaper in just 42 seconds - while blindfolded, too! Now true, there was nothing messy inside the diaper, she didn't need to apply any baby powder or Boudreaux's Butt Paste, and the doll wasn't anywhere nearly as wiggly as I'm going to be. But still - I take comfort in knowing that at least the doll's head stayed on!