Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

As we reflect on this past year we are amazed by the things that have happened. The year started as any other, with me in school working hard to finish my last semester of classes. We brought home an adorable new puppy named Astrid Løken von WinterKommt a.k.a Løki. Austin went to Jasper, Alberta, Canada to work and had a blast, as he typically does on his work “vacations” by himself. I also gave my first biochemistry lecture to a class of 400!

In February, we were raising puppies. We had 4 German Sheppard puppies living at our house while in training and getting ready to go to new homes, in addition to Jack and Lucy. Amongst the chaos we managed to take a quick trip to Utah to see friends and family.

In March, I took a trip to DC and New York City with the Ochiltree women. It was a great trip, but I didn’t feel so good while I was there. It makes sense now, I was pregnant and I just didn’t know it yet! Austin was a champ and pulled up all of the carpet and linolium in our house and now we have beautiful hardwood floors throughout the main level.

In April, we had a positive pregnancy test and our lives began changing forever! In addition to that big news, I was on the organizational committee for a conference held in Fargo where I won the RMBS Chair Award. Austin once again became a puppy wrangler with WinterKommt’s second litter of puppies born. He also took a trip to Vegas to time the Revel Mt. Charleston Marathon.

In May, Austin’s grandfather passed away. He was able to attend the beautiful service in Southern California with his family. I finished up the semester and was finally starting to get over the morning sickness.

In June, Loki started to learn how to dock jump. She was a little scared at first but her and Lucy can’t wait until spring to go swimming again (Jack would rather keep his feet on terra firma). Austin went to Denver to time the Revel Rockies Marathon and then to Salt Lake for a good friend’s wedding. The nursery was also painted in June, good thing we were starting to prepare early (foreshadowing)! In addition, I hit 20 weeks and we found out we were having a boy!

July brought our annual trip to Alaska where we enjoyed the great outdoors with very little internet. The trip was incredible minus the mishap of the last day. We thought we had another night there, until my dad got a notification to check into our next hotel and we realized we were off by a day[1]. We had to pack everything quickly and then find dinner, but almost everything closes early in Petersburg. Our only option was the local Chinese restaurant. I really wanted shrimp chow mein, but they didn’t have any. Then the waiter thought Austin and I were siblings. Pregnancy hormones were in full swing and I had to leave the restaurant a little a lot[2] distraught. Needless to say, it was a memorable meal for all involved. Austin also went to time the Revel Mt. Hood Marathon in Portland.

In August, my sister Emily was married to Kolton, bringing another man into the Brooks clan. I was admitted to the hospital 4 days after the wedding. I was lucky nothing happened while away from home. About this time, Austin started to notice weird rashes and hives while holding cold things (more foreshadowing).

September brought the birth of Owen! This also meant that I finally got to sleep in my own bed again after 3.5 long weeks in the hospital! I went back to the lab after being discharged, it was nice to be back in her element with a little bit of normalcy, but we we struggled with Owen in the NICU.

October was mostly a blur! Every day seemed to consist of driving to the hospital to be with Owen and trying to maintain a normal life. We finally brought Owen home and 6 weeks and we were able to celebrate his first Halloween at home. He was such a tiny pumpkin!

By November, Owen was able to meet all of his great-grandparents on my side and was able to celebrate his first Thanksgiving. Austin took a trip to Hurricane to see his family and be there for his sister’s operation, which went well. I had some single parent time with Owen while Austin traveled to time the Revel Mt. Lemmon Marathon. I lasted 2, maybe 3 days before calling Grandma Mandy to come over and help! I don’t know how single parents do it! Hats off to you!

December has been a fun month. Owen was able to meet his Aunt Emily and Uncle Kolton, celebrate his first Christmas, where he was incredibly spoiled, and finally met his grandpa, just this last weekend. On Sunday, Austin was able to bless his son with the most precious blessing. We also found out the mystery behind Austin’s hives this month! He has an allergy to the cold[3]! The allergy is only known to exist in 0.01% to 0.03% of the population, making Austin very unique! Austin now has an epipen that he has to take around everywhere he goes, but he refuses to give up ice cream. We are currently looking at moving somewhere much warmer to accommodate for Austin once I finish my PhD. The last exciting thing that happened is I passed my comprehensive exam! I am 1⁄3 of the way done with the steps I need to take to graduate!

As you now know this year was crazy! We couldn’t have done it all without our amazing support system! We are so grateful to all of you!! We don’t know what this next year brings but we can’t wait to take this adventure together!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Love,

The Pullans

Notes from Austin:

[1] - The ferry was leaving at 1 AM, so technically we had another night.

[2] - Jess may have wrote this article, but I am editing, she was a lot distraught. I need the record to show that I ordered chow mein and shrimp seperately, but it was not good enough.

[3] - Yes, it is real. It is called Cold Urticaria. My skin reacts with hives in response to contact with anything cold.

Owen is Making Strides to Come Home!

We are grateful for miracles. This week Owen has made incredible strides towards coming home. In addition to self temperature regulation and wearing clothes, Owen has been moved to a crib and now wears a sleeper! He has decided he loves baths too! Since he is finally 33 weeks he was able to start bottle feeding twice a day!! He is doing amazing and in the morning he can usually finish his 40 ml bottle and at night he takes about two-thirds of it. We are incredibly proud of him. He does amazing during his feed but gets really tired afterwards and has a hard time keeping his oxygen levels up. On Tuesday night they gave him a little bit of oxygen to get him to come back up. He struggled for quite a while because he was so tired. We decided that doing some skin to skin may help get him to regulate so we tried it and he stopped having problems. The next day he started to struggle and so back to skin to skin and he stopped struggling. That evening we didn’t even give him the chance to struggle and right after his feed put him on our chest and he didn’t struggle. I tell this story because we have come to appreciate the power of skin to skin. It has done miracles for baby O. Hopefully he will get to move up on the frequency of his bottles shortly!

The other big thing that happened this week is we moved to the other side of the NICU. This side is often referred to as the graduation side or the feeder-grower side. This is where the babies that are stable go. We have more space and we can relax a bit knowing the doctors and nurses think our baby is okay.

The last thing that our amazing kid did this week was hit 4 pounds!!! This is huge because now he is at the weight he can fit into a car seat and come home when the time comes. Hopefully that will be in a couple of weeks if he keeps eating the way he is. 

Within the past week every nurse has told us a variation of how big Owen has gotten or how amazing he is doing. It makes us so proud and we love that he is exceeding expectations. This week we got some insight into what bad days look like and it really scared us (so much so that Jess didn’t leave the hospital the day after his low oxygen incidence). But knowing he could have bad days has made us appreciate his good days even more!