Brigitta Nurilham Schlosser

This amazing girl came into Haniza’s and my life (in person that is) at 8:16am this January 9th morning. One healthy young girl at 9lbs 2oz (4.14kg) and 19inches (48.3cm).

Mother and baby are doing fine. Haniza is recovering well and currently resting in the postpartum room. It is really nice since it is a single person room and they have a chair that makes into a bed for me to hang out there with her.

Brigitta Nurilham is having a little problem with blood sugar. Since she was such a big girl, her blood sugar count was low and dropping so eventually they had to put her on an IV and she has to stay in the nursery for now. This makes a little more difficult since Haniza now has to go to the nursery to nurse Brigitta.
For those of you interested in the beginning to end story, here it goes. We left home at 5:00am and it was really foggy driving to the hospital – started out more like a scary movie than a happy day. But we made it through the fog to the hospital.

This is Haniza getting ready before the cesarean. She was so calm and I was the one who was all stressed out. Everyone kept asking me if I am OK, so it must have looked bad. It was tough … no spreadsheets, no project plans, no emergency emails … I was not sure how to handle this.

This is Brigitta making her triumphant arrival in the world. That is Haniza’s OB/GYN doctor delivering the baby. It all happened so fast – nothing like a natural child birth with labor taking hours. I am glad I was quick with the camera, although I am sure Brigitta will hate this photo later :-)

This is Brigitta just a few minutes old. I think she is wondering why everything is so bright. You can definitely see she has Haniza'a nose and red lips.

Finally I get to hold her for the first time. Once I picked her up and she heard my voice, she just looked at me and stopped crying. I am sure she recognized my voice because if I said anything, she would look at me. I was really surprised because she could lift her head a bit right after birth.

Haniza gets to see her beautiful daughter for the first time. That is me bringing her over. She could recognize Haniza’s voice too even though Haniza’s poor voice was getting horse from a cough the day before. When Haniza talked, Brigitta would open her eyes a little and turn her head.

I took Brigitta to the Nursery where they weighed and measured her. Since she was also a bigger baby, they checked for her blood sugar count, which was low. This was also the first time I could take off my gown and mask so that Brigitta could see my face and hear my voice clearly. So I got close to her little face, recited the Adhan (the call to prayer) and went on to talk to her about everything I could think of to talk about – she is a really good listener.

We tried to feed Brigitta a little formula to get her blood sugar count back up. This is her being burped by the nurse. Unfortunately, this didn’t work and the poor little girl had to have an IV hooked up to her along with all the monitors. So now she is in the nursery intensive care with all these wires (monitors) hooked up to her and an IV in her little foot. Luckily, it seems that this is only a temporary solution and other than this, she is a perfectly healthy little girl.

Brigitta Holding my finger. We intentionally did not have them bathe Brigitta since we wanted her to go to Haniza like this. Evidently, there are hormones that this triggers between mother and baby, which are good for the bonding and stimulates the breastfeeding.

Mother and baby re-united. Before Brigitta had to get an IV, we were able to bring her out to be with Haniza for a little while. Brigitta really was comfortable with Haniza. I was sad the time was so short … only about 50 min before she had to go to the NICU (nursery intensive care unit).

Haniza is having pretty strong nauseating feelings from the anesthesia and can’t keep anything down right now so I am staying with her helping her out. Brigitta is sleeping in the NICU and will stay there thru the night. Hopefully, in the morning, Haniza will regain enough strength and Brigitta will have her sugar counts up enough to get everyone back together in one room. I have my hands full right now, but I know all of you are praying and thinking about us and that makes a big difference.

So long from the hospital – more pics and updates soon.

Kevin