Best words heard

I was in the car with Maggie, after picking her up from MDO today and this is what I heard:
(watching her in the rear view mirror)

"Momma Back.
Maggie happy.
Love you Momma."

Love you, too, sweetpea!

A simple stamp

...yes, that's where it all began. A simple ink stamp inprinted on Maggie's hand from Mother's Day Out on Tuesday. Honestly, I could barely see it but she was so proud. She was so proud of her stamp. The day came and went and Wednesday afternoon, I was wiping her hands off from something no doubt sticky and she pulled her hand back and pulled it close to her eyes and started crying. "Where it go?" I said, "where did what go, sweet pea?" "Where it go, Momma? It go bye-bye" And it hit me....the stamp. And then it REALLY hit me...oh no, THE STAMP IS GONE!

Some of you may remember me talking about this in the past but I can't remember. Maggie has always had a huge issue with seeing anything thrown away, put away, discarded ~ at first it was just food (and understandable with her history of not being fed) and then it was anything that she associated as being hers. So, we have become accustomed to throwing things away when she is sleeping. This is not just the typical 2 year old mentality of "mine" - this is a deep need to hold on to whatever she can because she went without for so long.

I tried to distract her but that wasn't working. It was bath time, which I thought would calm her down - boy was I wrong. She loves her bath time. She could sit in there and play for an hour if I let her. Not last night. Nope. She refused. She cried. She screamed. She kicked. There was NO way she was getting in there with the possibility of anything touching her hand with the stamp used to be. However, I put her in there and gave her the fastest bath ever. She was just over-the-top upset with the loss of this stamp. Michael kept telling her that "daddy would draw a butterfly or flower on her hand" - she refused. I pulled out my scrapbooking stamps, showed them all to her, gave her a choice of 10 different color ink pads...she wasn't going to have it. It took her nearly 2 hours to calm down. There was absolutely nothing we could do to replace that stamp or bring it back. All we could do was love on her and try to reassure her that it was going to be ok.

I was rocking her for a bit and she finally settled down. I asked her what she wanted and she just said "need rest momma's bed"...and that's what she did. She laid down in our bed for over an hour, just watching some tv and hardly moved. It's so heartbreaking to see this unfold before your eyes. Something so small, so trivial to the rest of the world, but the little girl that stamp was the world. We may never know the full extent of Maggie's past and all that she endured. All we can do is love her, protect her, provide for her, and comfort her in the days and months and years to come.

When I woke up Maggie this morning and told her she was going to school today, she immediately looked to her hand and looked like she was going to cry. But she looked at me and said - "ok, Momma. Go school. Be good girl. Have fun."....and thankfully, that's exactly what she did.

School Days

I can't begin to tell you how wonderful Maggie's MDO experience has been. She is so excited to go each day. Can't wait to put her backpack on each morning & check out what Momma put in her lunchbag to eat. She woke up yesterday squealing "schoooooool Momma!" Yes, today we are going to school.

Mrs. Vicki has told us that Maggie is doing really well. She's playing well with all the other kids, is listening better, taking a nap every day (although you wouldn't know it from the crankiness that hits an hour or so after getting home!) and eating most of her lunch. She's also trying to go potty with the other kids (they work on potty training!!!!) She hasn't gone yet but is very interested (and that has also increased @ home too) She brings home some piece of artwork/lesson learned each day and we have them all hung up on the wall in her playroom. She is always so excited to show both her momma and daddy. She is talking up a storm! Even in 2 short weeks, her sentence building skills has greatly improved and she'll start using words that she's never used before. Michael & I will just look at each other and say - where did she learn that? It's so neat.

I am so thankful that we were able to get her in and that she is adjusting so well. It's also helped with me leaving the house without her...and when I do get home, there is a much warmer, sweeter welcome awaiting me. Just today, upon returning from my office, she ran up to me, hugged my knees and said "momma back! momma back!" She jumped right into my arms and gave me a big kiss. That hasn't always been the case. In the past, I really think that she was quite upset with me leaving and it could take up to an hour for her to acknowledge that I was back home. So, I am really glad about that :)

Mother's Day Out

Tuesday was Maggie's first day at MDO. Actually, it was her first day anywhere without Momma & Daddy. We are blessed that one of us is always home with her during the day, so for 14 months Maggie has been at home and not in daycare. Because of this, she has become overly attacted and separation anxiety had become an issue with her. It is bitter sweet. When you bring in an abused/neglected child, you long for them to become attached, because they have most likely not experienced that before. And often times, they become overly attached. So, then you have to deal with breaking that and teaching them that when Momma or Daddy leave, we are coming back!

Maggie would have meltdowns if I went out to the mailbox without her (even though she could see me through the front windows).

All this to say, we were quite anxious about her starting "school". We had been talking about school for a couple of weeks ~ explaining that she was going to go somewhere and have lots of fun, play with lots of kids, have teachers, etc. We have felt very strongly that she needed to be around other kids but more importantly that she did need to know that we would be coming back for her.

Tuesday morning, we get to the church. Maggie can't get out of her carseat fast enough. She is so excited. She gets her backpack on (it's almost as big as she is!), grabs her lunch bag and then my hand and says - "let's go Momma". I said, "where are we going?" She yells "SCHOOOOOL!" Yep, just a LITTLE excited :) She is holding onto my hand, dragging me the whole way. We get to her room, she drops her backpack in mid-stride, at this point basically running in place, waiting to get in the room. And right as she's going in, I say - "hey...gonna give Momma a kiss?" She stops, turns around, smiles, gives me a kiss and never looks back. I sign her in, disperse all her many items, and take a sneak peek. She's already in the kitchen/doll area playing. I walked out with a huge smile on my face. I really worried that I might lose it and was praying that the water falls wouldn't open up, but when I saw how excited and happy she was ~ I couldn't have been happier for her.

I got home and thought...ok...wow...now what do I do? Those 5 hours were the quietest and long hours I've had in 14+ months. I think Momma's gonna like school, too :)

When it was time to pick her up, Maggie was sitting on the floor next to another little girl. Her teacher said, "Maggie look who's here". Maggie looked up, jumped to her feet, came running with a huge grin and said "Mommmmmma!" She ran into my legs, embraced me and said "momma back...momma back" Yes, Momma came back! You know that your children love you, but there's nothing better than truly feeling it...like I did Tuesday afternoon.

2nd Sleep Study

I was really nervous for Maggie's 1st sleep study...and she did great.

So, I thought...no need to be worried about the 2nd one. Wrong.

Maggie jumped right on the bed, ready for something to eat and to watch a movie. This time she chose Horton Hears A Who? It wasn't long that the technicians came in to get started. It wasn't even 7:30 yet (compared to the 9pm start the 1st time), so I was a little surprised. However, they said they wanted to get her all set up because it will take a few times for her to get used to the CPAP mask. Ok.

Maggie did great with the initial set up - just like before. Until it was time to mask her. That was a whole other story. And that's when I got worried. She used to have daily breathing treatments so I knew that she didn't like anything being on her face. Those breathing treatments only lasted a few minutes - this mask was going to stay on for 7+ hours. It was a very small mask but when you're small, it seems huge. Plus the straps were huge and went across her face (almost covering her eyes) and then up and around her head. It looked similar to this:



Now, that's not too scary, is it?! Try and picture that on a 2 year old! We got it on her and waited a few minutes to actually turn the machine on. When we did, it seemed like all hell broke loose. Poor thing. She was screaming for me and kept saying "hurt, ouch, off". I'm not quite sure how long they let it run the first time (maybe 2 minutes) but it sure seemed like an eternity. They turned it off, but kept the mask on. That didn't last too long. We took the mask off and she was fine watching the movie again. Another 30 minutes passed and they said it was time to put it back on. She went into hysterics. I tried everything I could to calm her down - nothing worked. Turned it back off, took the mask off again and they were going to come back in when it was time to go to sleep. 9pm came and it was Groundhog Day all over again. Except this time - machine wasn't turned off and mask was left on. TV was turned off, iPhone (she was playing some games) was removed and no bottle to be had.

*Oh yeah - that was the 2nd part of this...when you're on the cpap machine, you can't be drinking anything or else you will choke. So, not only did she have this huge mask on her face and told to go to sleep but she couldn't have her "baba" either. Double whammy.

2 1/2 hours later (yes, you read that right) ~ she was so exhausted but still crying. She had not stopped. She couldn't calm down. I was just about to go and tell the technician that this wasn't going to work and we were going to go home (11:30pm). However, she came in and said, why don't we take the mask off, give her a bottle and see if that will relax her and then put it back on. Ok.

I'm NOT kidding when I say that in less than 1 minute of getting that baba, my sweet angel was fast asleep. Immediately I thought ~ now, why didn't we think of this earlier?!?!? We waited about 10 minutes and put the mask back on her while she was sleeping. She didn't wake up (she was OUT!) and I slowly removed myself from the bed and went to lay down on the fold out bed. I was exhausted. I was hungry. I had a horrific headache.

At least once an hour, Maggie woke up screaming. She normally wakes up a few times in the night but never screaming, so I can only assume that it was the mask scaring her. It was a looooong night, poor thing.

They woke us up at 6am, took everything off and we were back home by 7am. Immediately put Maggie in the tub to get her cleaned up of all the goop. Ate some breakfast and then I headed to bed.

I called today for her results, but they're not in yet. I was told to call back next week. Hopefully we won't have to wait nearly as long to get the results this time.

IF the test shows that she does indeed need to be on the cpap machine, I just don't see how in the world she is going to wear it. Maybe it will be better being at home, in her own bed....one can only hope! Our hope is that it won't be needed, but I don't think that's going to be the case.