Isabella already had her United States passport (otherwise she couldn’t join me to the Netherlands, of course), but since she is also a Dutch citizen (because I hold the Dutch nationality), she can also get a Dutch passport and I thought that she should get one also.

I wrote it a while ago that requesting a passport for the Dutch in foreign countries would not be the easiest thing to do, I was kind of afraid that I would forget something, or that we would have to deal with some bureaucratic mess (especially after importing Flamey into the Netherlands). Fortunately it turned out to be a lot easier than expected.

In the morning of February 15, Isabella and I went to The Hague as this is the only place where we could request a passport for her (foreign consulates and embassies not included, but we have to fly a long way to get there.. the easiest is still to do this while we are in the Netherlands, like now).

Once we arrived in The Hague, we went straight to the city hall and asked for a place where we could make a passport picture for Isabella. Normally this is also possible inside the city hall, but they don’t take pictures of babies as these are much harder to take (according to them), so they told us to go to a photographer at the other side of the street (which turned out to be a cigar store that also made photo’s) who might be able to make the photo. The man who helped us (with an enormous Hague accent) asked me right away if Isabella was half Filipina, that was pretty incredible, not many people can guess this right.

After a short wait of about five to ten minutes, we went back inside the city hall to request the passport for Isabella, and to get her foreign (American) birth certificate registered in the Netherlands (if we ever move to the Netherlands, we wouldn’t have to travel all the way to Hawai’i for a birth certificate, but then we can also request one in the Hague).

Once it was our turn, it turned out things would be much easier than expected at first. I gave them my documents, they entered some information in the computer, they looked for a second if Isabella was really her, and the request for the passport was approved. While she (the city employee) copied the necessary documents I went to pay for the passport, after which I received all originals again. Everything went really smooth.

By the way, these are the documents that I needed:

- Passport photo (we only needed 1)

- Birth certificate with apostille (certified)

- Marriage certificate with apostille (certified) (I didn’t really needed this certificate as the Hawaiian marriage certificate was already entered into the Dutch system, I just brought it with me to be certain)

- A signed approval by the mother (and notarized by a notary public) for the passport (as Michelle was not there)

- Identification of the three of us

- My greencard (to prove my Dutch citizenship (a Dutch passport does not prove you are still a citizen))

I turned this into a expedited request as it normally takes about 10 days to pick the passport up again, and since that was a bit short on time. Now it would only take 3 days. It costs a bit more but it is better to be sure with these things (plus, it is always cheaper than 2 airline tickets of minimal 450 dollar each (not to mention the extra costs) when we had to get this in the US).

I hope things will be just as easy in five years from now, when Isabella and I have to renew our passports, but I am afraid it will take a bit more effort by then as, by then, I will (well, when everything goes according to plan) hold both the Dutch and the US nationality, and then I will have to bring extra documents to prove my Dutch citizenship. That might turn out to be pretty exciting again by then, but fortunately it is a long way from now

On February 9, 2010, Isabella and I went to the Netherlands for a visit of the family. They had never seen Isabella before, and they haven’t seen me either since 2008, so it was about time to do this. Michelle was unable to join us as she lost all her days off when she gave birth to Isabella.

So I went alone with the baby to the Netherlands. I can tell you that I was really nervous because of that trip as you have to travel for almost 24 hours. Will Isabella cry or not? That was my biggest fear, that Isabella would cry her heart out while we were in a plane full of people. Fortunately it wasn’t all that bad.

Michelle’s last cat, Flamey, also joined us on the trip as she was a present to my mother. Michelle has a pretty bad cat allergy and we decided that we should give this cat to my mom instead, so it would end up in a nice home. That was another factor of my worries, of course, will everything go well with that little one? Cats can be really stressed, and this was a pretty long journey.

Our plane would leave from Honolulu towards Los Angeles at 9.40pm, where it would make a short stop in order to fly on to Minneapolis/St. Paul, where we had to board another plane towards Amsterdam.

We arrived way ahead of time at the airport, but there was already a long row of people who had to be checked in. Because of the cat, we also had to line up in that same row (otherwise we would check in online). Once it was our turn, we had to fill in quite some papers and we had to show them the (health)papers of the cat, and we also had to deal with a broken printer (I wanted to get a receipt for bringing the cat, you never know haha).

So we had to wait for quite some time, and at the end of it all, after a short but emotional goodbye (like said, Michelle would stay all alone on Oahu), I had to hurry towards the gate. Once Isabella and I arrived at the gate, it turned out that everyone was waiting for me, everyone else already boarded, and they wanted to depart.. I can tell you, you will feel pretty embarrassed when you get on the plane at that time.

I quickly installed Isabella in her carseat on the seat next to me, and after one of the flight attendants told me that the cat was also safely on board, we were ready to depart.

Isabella remained pretty quiet during take off. I fed her during the take off, to avoid the popping of her ears. However, she did cry when the seatbelts light turned off. What I personally think is that Isabella was way too tired, she had been awake for most of the afternoon before our flight because her grandmother wanted to see her. Anyways, I grabbed her and walked up and down the airplane with her in my arms, and thankfully that calmed her down (I thought it was terrible, first to hold up a complete plane, and then a crying baby on board.. oh oh oh).

Next to me there was a man, and his family (wife and two kids) sat on the other end of the walkway in the same row. When Isabella and I were walking for a bit, the lady asked me if she could hold Isabella, and try to calm her down. I gave Isabella to her and I got some time to get some things done for myself, and Isabella calmed down even more. The man next to me said he would move to a seat more forward in the plane (the plane was pretty empty), so he could get some sleep and I would have more space to get in and out of my seat. I can tell you that this was very nice.

Isabella calmed down after a short while (fortunately) and I put her back in her seat where she slept for the remainder of the flight. With that, I had two seats for myself (and of course the space under the third seat of Isabella, to stretch my legs) and I had a pretty relaxed flight. Like said, Isabella slept for the remainder of the flight and after about 4.5 hours, we arrived in Los Angeles.

I ate some breakfast in Los Angeles, changed Isabella’s diapers, fed her and shortly after that all it was time again to leave towards Minneapolis.

I was curious to see how the flight to Minneapolis would be, especially because I did not know if I had someone next to me or not. Well, it turned out that this flight was even emptier than the flight coming from Honolulu (and Isabella stayed quiet also, she also slept most of that flight). We left at dawn and a few hours later we arrived in a very white, and very cold, Minneapolis.

In Minneapolis we had to wait for a few hours, which turned out to be ok as the Delta employees needed Flamey’s papers again, the vet that took care of her during that stop needed it. Once it was time to get on board again, we got into a very full flight. Because Isabella didn’t cry so much, I didn’t know exactly what I could expect, it could stay like it was but she could also become restless. The flight attendants were immediately sold by her and didn’t want to give her back, but yeah, they had to work so that was bit of bad luck for them haha.

Isabella also remained pretty quiet during the long flight to Amsterdam. A few times she wanted to cry, when she woke up from some noise for example, but a quick reaction helped a lot. After a long flight we arrived in the dark, and light snow, in the Netherlands. There was only one runway open at Schiphol Airport due to snow earlier that night, and since the wind came from our side, we went from left to right during our approach (I could especially see this when we drove home on the freeway, the planes landing at that time were bouncing a lot).

We got off the plane and went towards customs. At the passport check, I went through ‘all passports’, because of Isabella’s US passport (it turned out later we could also take the other line) and apparently I have a Dutch face because they greeted me in plain Dutch haha.

Near the luggage belt, I asked how it would go with Flamey, where I could expect her, and they told me that she would either be brought to the belt, or to the desk where I was at that time. I then went on to the luggage claim to get our suitcases and once I had those, they also brought Flamey’s crate to the desk. The KLM employee (I think she is from KLM as she was dressed in blue) asked on the radio if it was my cat, and they confirmed it but it looked like there was no cat in the crate…

No cat in the crate? How is that possible? They gave me a confirmation in Minneapolis that she was on board of the plane. But what do you think? Flamey got scared during the flight (I can’t blame her, it is really something for such a creature) and she hid herself under the blanket that we put in the crate for her, so it looked as if there was no cat at all. Luckily she was there, and fortunately she looked healthy also.

The comments from the girls at the desk were nice. Such a beautiful baby and beautiful cat, I had to be a very happy man haha. That was nice, I received a lot of compliments about Isabella anyways, that she is so beautiful, and that she was so nicely quiet during the flight and also because I was so brave to go on such a journey alone with a baby and cat.

One of the ladies offered me to walk me towards the exit, because I had so much with me (you could say I brought too much haha), and once we got to the exit, the customs stopped me. If I had all papers for the cat…

I did my homework and had all kinds of papers with me (USDA papers, EU papers, all kinds of certificates and so on) that one could think of. The woman who asked me for the papers took them with her, and together with 4 or 5 people they looked at them. I really got the impression that they did not really know what they were looking at, or that they knew at all what they were doing. A bit later they told me that they had to make a phone call, and after that call she came back to me and said she was impressed, it did not happen often for someone to have all needed papers.

At that point I felt a bit like “nice, I can see that I am back in the Netherlands”. I also noticed, during my wait time at the exit, that the customs only stopped a certain kind of people for a luggage check.. Welcome to the Netherlands…

Once we were cleared and got out, my mother, sister and daughter Larissa were waiting for us, and after an emotional reunion we went towards Breda.

My first impressions of the Netherlands at that time? It was extremely cold and it looked like everyone was mad on the road. Everyone was in a hurry and went from left to right on the freeway. It is possible that me being tired had something to do with it, but at the other hand, we are not that much in a hurry on Hawaii and we drive a lot easier. I finally could see why Michelle was scared to drive in the Netherlands when she visited me in 2007.

Yes, I could really notice that I haven’t been in the Netherlands for some time, I felt a bit like a tourist in my own country.

I would follow up with a bit longer post as I said in yesterdays Twitter message.. And next to that, someone also asked for some explanation of what happened, why we want to sell one of the houses and one of the cars so all of the sudden, so let’s do that for now.

Because it wouldn’t be so nice of me to go too much into details, I will try not to do that (also because it would be just too many details haha). However, in short (ahum) it comes down to the following:

Michelle, Isabella, and myself, currently live in a pretty big house which we share with Michelle’s mother (both Michelle and her mother are owner of this house). And for a long time several things happen now and then, which makes it harder and harder each time to live here in the same house (ok, we do have our own part of the house, completely separated, but still, you’ll get the idea.. if you live in the same house, even though it’s big and separated, to avoid each other gets pretty hard, you still see and hear way too much).

So, Michelle and I decided that it would be better to live somewhere else (and this is actually something we’ve been thinking about for a longer period of time, but we never did anything concrete). We thought about all this for a longer time, to see how we would do it, and about a week ago we decided that it might be best to just sell one of the houses, from which half of the house is being rented, and to buy a better suitable house somewhere else with the profit (a large of the people who live there now can then live in our part of our current house so they don’t have to live on the streets).

Indeed, we could of course also go and live in that house ourselves, but to live with the three of us in a house that has 10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and 4 kitchens, that seems a bit excessive.  We also don’t exactly like the idea of living there while other people rent the other part of the house (you still have the same situation, and a lack of privacy). A new home with three to four bedrooms would be more than enough for us.

So that’s a bit the story of why we have that house for sale.

However, Michelle’s mother is not happy at all that we want to sell that house (to say the least) and that created even more friction (and even more so because she did not hear it from us but from someone in Michelle’s family. We told them about it in trust (or so we thought).. nice.. I’m unsure if that person follows this blog also, but if he does: Thank you very much!! Like we tell your mother about what your wife told us that day… geez, talk about creating family problems..).

So anyways, her mother then said with her angry head that she would not pay for the Toyota Matrix anymore (the car story starts here). Michelle received that car last August as a gift from her mother. The car, and the loan, are both in Michelle’s and my name (because, due to circumstances, her mother could not do this), but she would pay for it. We actually didn’t want a second car at that time as we didn’t really need it, we were just thinking and doubting about it. Nothing more. Of course it is easy to have a second car, but there is no real need for it (I work at home and watch the baby, while Michelle only works 4 nights a week).

You could ask why we sell that car, that a loan is not that high. Well, that’s true, it isn’t that high, but we still have to make a lot of other expenses right now (plus we also have to renew some of the things in the other house if we want to sell it, and that costs money too) and that car is also still a bit of an extra luxury. We could also get rid of my BMW, however, because we did a high down payment, we pay less for the BMW each month than what the Toyota costs (and the time frame is also shorter - 3 years compared to 5 years). The best solution would be to get rid of the Toyota. We wanted to do it like this, so we have the least problems with debts, and that we do not have to break our good creditscore..

But oh well, we hang some papers on the inside of the car, to sell it, and we placed it on the net, and what do you think… Michelle’s mother had to speak to us urgently.. why? Well, she saw that we meant business and all of the sudden she still wanted to pay for the car. Where she gets the money is beyond me, but she wants to pay it of in one time (yeah, the same amount which you’ve seen in my ‘tweet’ earlier).

She also still did not want us to sell the other house (she once gave it to Michelle as a present (you might think that you can do whatever you want with your received gifts?)). No, instead she would go for another mortgage on monday, and make sure we will get the house with that..

Yeah, what to do, what to do… that is, or actually: ‘was’ the question. I have had a long talk with my mother a bit earlier (yep, it’s night for her, so that wasn’t much fun for her I think) but she did help me, I think, to be able to make a decision.. Or at least so that I think to know what we should do.

As far as I can see now, there are a few possibilities:

• We sell the house, and buy a new house somewhere else. Michelle’s mother will be very disappointed, and we will get another fight with her.
• We don’t sell the house, and do what her mother offers us, namely that she gets a mortgage over this house (the one from both Michelle and her mother) and that she buys another house for us with that money.
• We go back to the Netherlands (and still leave her mother disappointed behind as she doesn’t want to lose her daughter, which is also one of the reasons why we live here and not in the Netherlands).
• We go to live in the other house, and then nothing will change much. We will, however, live in a house that is way too big for us, and we don’t want to live with others in the same house.
• We stay where we are now, her mother happy but we will not and it might do an enormous damage to the relationship between Michelle and me.

Nice choices, right? Whatever we will choose, either her mother will be disappointed, or we ourselves will be.

Well, I think it will become the first choice, this because of a number of reasons. One of them is, for example, that we do not want Michelle’s mother to be able to keep having some kind of grip on us by paying a mortgage for us. We cannot afford a mortgage of 2500-3000 dollar a month ourselves (yes, Hawaii is very expensive), and I really doubt her mother can (she also pays for several other things, amongst which 3 other mortgages). And then the most important thing is that we do not want to be depending on her, we want to do these things ourselves. It would not be fair either to let her get such big debts.. and besides, what if she cannot afford it anymore? Then we will still have a problem, and then we still might have to sell the other house?

The other three options are also not very good possibilities. The last one is the least of all as it doesn’t change anything to the situation. Out of those three, going to the Netherlands is still the best.

Bleh, no this is not a fun situation. For now we removed the for sale signs from the car, and put that on hold for now. If her mother really has to pay that one for us, ok, we can live with that. But to accept a house of 600,000 dollar is something else, especially when we just know that she will bring herself into a big pile of debts with that, and even might have to work until the day she dies because of that same debt. She would be better off if she would go retire, or at least would take less of a workload on herself, and not always try to make everybody else happy by giving them all so much money (honestly, she could’ve been rich).

Yeah.. what to do, what to do… sigh.. I couldn’t think of a better title for this piece because it is indeed the question what the best will be.

Oh well, fortunately I can go back to the Netherlands for a few weeks, together with Isabella, so I will see  some change then. However, Michelle does not have enough paid days off due to her pregnancy leave, so I will have to go alone (which is pretty scary, alone with a baby, flying so long), but that will be ok, we know what the tax refund will be this year, so most likely she will receive her holiday a bit later this year.

Like I said before in a tweet: wish us luck

In other words: merry Christmas and a happy new year!

I know, I know, it has been quite a while since I last posted a message, and of course posted some pictures. It is not like I didn’t have anything to tell, but the new thing (about me moving here) is a bit gone and to post things double is a bit odd too. We don’t go out too much lately, also because of the H1N1 (mostly becasue it is a huge risk for Isabella), so we miss a large part of things to tell already.

But ok, the end of the year 2009 is getting closer, so it seemed like a plan to write a new post before the year would be over again (plus I received lots of questions of people as they wanted to see new pictures and such of our little Isabella haha, so yeah, that also had something to do with it).

Isabella is doing well, by the way. She is still a very sweet baby, with the hours between 5PM and 8PM as exception.. I think she doesn’t like the transition from day to night that much, because she can cry quite a bit in those hours. Officially she is a bit colicky (a baby has to cry for at least 3 hours 3 days per week, and 3 months to be classified as a colic baby), which was something we could expect as she was so early (it seems to be one of the complications) but fortunately it is not as bad as you hear sometimes about, it is usually not more than three to four hours and it doesn’t happen every day.. oh well, if that is everything, then it isn’t as bad as it could’ve been

Isabella now weighs a bit more than 10 pounds (over 4.5 kilos), so she gained quite a bit. Thankfully she is healthy, and I have to say that sometimes I was a bit afraid as they say that an early baby, such as Isabella, can easily end up in the hospital during the first year due to all kinds of complications. So we can say that we were very lucky so far

My family can call themselves a bit less lucky, though. At first we would go to the Netherlands during the holidays, because I haven’t been in the Netherlands since I moved here over a year ago, and also because none of them has seen Isabella in real life so far. But the H1N1 has made us decide to delay it until it would be a bit less bad, if Isabella would get infected with that flu, it would be very deadly for her as she is still so young and, well, you don’t want to risk the life of such a young baby.

But ok, enough talk for now, I should post some new photo’s of the little Isabella..

In November we went back to Waimea Falls again, mostly because it rained a few days earlier and we could expect a nice waterfall:

91 years age difference:

Recently I noticed that Isabella was sucking on her thumb for the first time.. I wanted to make a picture of it but unfortunately it never goes the way you want it.. oh well, still made the following photo’s:

And then the last few pictures.. A few days ago an uncle of Michelle came to visit Hawaii. They had not seen him for about 12 years (and then I complain about my one year haha), and of course we made some photo’s:

And that was all again for now. I don’t dare to make a promise about me posting a new message before the end of the year, you’ll always see that something comes up so you can’t do it haha.. It will come.

From a sunny, and warm Hawaii (it is still 85-90 degrees during the day, it is a dry and warm winter) we wish you a Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Brrr.. it’s cold!

Today is the first time since the summer that I wear long pants because I felt it was a bit cold. The temperature of today? Well, don’t be scared, it was about 80 degrees (26 Celsius) haha! Oh well, it is not so much the temperature which made it colder, but mostly the rain which did that as it has been a pretty rainy day.

Last night I really felt cold though. Well, for the folks back in the Netherlands this probably sounds a bit ridiculous as it was about 74 degrees Fahrenheit (about 23 in Celsius). You might think, what a nice temperature, and I would have agreed with you if it was not for me living here for over six months in 90 degrees or even higher. I have, in other words, gotten used to the warmth. And the fact that I have had a shortage of sleep lately, mostly thanks to our little girl, has probably also something to do with me getting cold a bit faster. And what to think about all the windows and doors that are always open? As soon as there is a breeze, we feel it inside our home. And then there is the form of heat, as soon as it gets over 80 degrees in the Netherlands, then it feels way warmer than it does over here as they have a much warmer (humid) heat.

Oh well, it is not so bad that it gets a bit colder now the ‘winter’ is coming as we are now able to have Isabella more in the livingroom. We didn’t really wanted to do this as it was just too hot for her.

Speaking of Isabella, we went to the lactation today again, and everything was really good. Isabella has been weighed again and her weight was now 6 lbs and 14.5 oz (or 3133 grams). She is perfectly on schedule because if she was born on her normal due date, then she would now be a week old. They also told us today that we did not had to wake her every three hours anymore, but the we could just do it on demand. And Michelle does not have to pump and give extra milk from a bottle after she gave the breast, she can now do it by breastmilk alone. So today a few more milestones have been reached by our little girl

Yep, time flies. Isabella is two months old now (and a day), and the funny thing is that she wasn’t supposed to get born until tomorrow (October 27).. that she is already here, and is in good health, can only be seen as a small miracle.

I know, I know, I didn’t post in a while, and with that I didn’t show anything of Isabella anymore. This is mainly due to my busy schedule nowadays, mostly because of Isabella of course, but also because of some projects that I am working on, and because of that, I didn’t see much time to write something again.

Well, Isabella is, like I said, in good health. She has been to the doctor’s office today for a checkup as she is two months old now. They took her weight (she also gets her weight every week at the lactation nurse, because she was born so early and her weight needs to be closely monitored), and they took her length also. According to this scale (I don’t like this scale, as I will show you in a graph), she is now weighing  6 pounds and 2 ounces (2778 grams), and her length is 19.1 inch (48,5 centimeter). When you compare this to when she was only just born, then this is a big difference as her birth weight was only 2 pounds and 10.9 ounces (1220 grams). Yeah, she seems to be on a roll with her weight. I’ve placed her weights in a graph, by the way:

As you can see, there is an odd gap in that graph. This was the other time that they took her weight at the doctors’ office, and not with the (more secure) scale of the lactation office. Two days after that weight, she was weighed by the lactation nurse, and there she was back in her normal line. So if there is such a difference between those two, then she should actually weigh more right now. But ok, I won’t find out about that until next week.

At the end of this visit, Isabella received 3 injections and a small drink. She had to get a number of vaccinations, against things such as Polio, Diphtheria, Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, and more of these things. The nurse who gave her the shots, warned me that she might cry a lot as these injections seem to hurt badly. But what do you think, there were two small screams, and that was it. The nurse was quite surprised and said that normally all kids seem to cry a lot. I told her that it was possibly because her adventure in the hospital, where she had a lot of shots, and that this might have been a minor thing for her. But oh well, whatever may be the case, I am pretty proud of her that she is so incredibly strong.

Those shots made her pretty drowsy, which they told me that might happen. I don’t really mind that this happened as I now have the time to write a message here haha. She might get some fever, as a side effect of those injections, apparently there is a big possibility. I hope she wont get it, I doubt she’ll like it.

Anyways, I also have to give you guys a few new pictures, so you can see she grew a lot. So here are a few new ones of today:

She is currently pretty drowsy and sleepy, sometimes a bit weepy, so I will make some new pictures somewhere later this week, on which she will be a bit more awake, and a bit less weepy

Time is flying, today I am in Hawai’i for exactly a year. On October 2nd, 2008, around 8.15 in the evening, I landed on the airport of Honolulu. Did I miss the Netherlands the last year? Yeah, from time to time I did but fortunately it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I used to have a serious case of homesickness whenever I stayed away from home for a bit, sometimes even so bad that I could become really really sick of it. But this year, far away from the Netherlands, it all wasn’t so bad, I don’t think I was really homesick. Nevertheless I do look forward to see my family in the Netherlands again, haha.

Isabella is finally home since Sunday afternoon!

She was able to get into her new carseat pretty easy, so we didn’t have to purchase another one lol. I have to say that I feel a bit like she is drowning in her carseat, she is so small compared to that seat haha. As you can see on the following pictures, she really needs some extra support from those sheets:

This carseat is, however, just a temporary solution, as soon as she is big enough, she is going into her own real seat. Personally I think her real seat is a lot nicer and better in color.. plus we can have it on a stroller, so I don’t have to carry her constantly, which is also nice haha. Her own seat looks like the following, by the way:

Next to the seats above, she also has another seat which is placed in Michelle’s car for when she takes Isabella with her. But ok, that one is also a bit too big at the moment haha.

We stayed in the hospital the following night, Saturday to Sunday, because they offered us to room in for a night, so we could see if we’re ready ourselves.. they offer this to everyone so everyone can get used to their child for a night, to see if everything goes as planned, and when it does not go as planned, so that the nurses are still close by also. I had never heard of it before but I kind of like the idea, it is a good tool to get a feeling of how things are.

Of course we didn’t sleep much that night, of course there was Isabella making all kinds of sounds (not much, but still), there was a lot of noise coming from the hallway (after all, it is a hospital, not a hotel), and every now and then there was someone checking up on us around the time that Isabella needed to get her food. So we didn’t get much sleep and are pretty tired right now (because, yeah, try to catch up on your sleep when you have to feed a small kid every three hours haha)..  oh well, things will be alright

Here’s a few pictures of Isabella in her new environment, we will post some more photo’s of Isabella in her new room later of course:

It looks like we, even though it is a bit faster than expected, can bring some good news. But let me first start where we ended at the last post about Isabella.

The day after Isabella was allowed to stay out of the isolette, she was allowed to try breast feeding. This was, again, above all expectation. Instead of just playing around, which was the thing they expected, she seemed to be able to drink pretty well already.

When we arrived the day after that, it turned out that Isabella was moved a bit to a different location, but when we opened the door, we didn’t know this yet, so we saw the following:

This didn’t look anything like Isabella haha, it’s a doll which they also use for CPR classes and such. But, yes, it did make us wonder about it at first haha.

Then there were a few days in which not much new things happened, this is one of the reasons why I waited before I would write a new post. One of the things I can tell you, however, is that she wore some very cute outfits, like this one that she got from my mother:

Besides this there was not much to tell you, until we heard a couple of days that they would start to let her take all the feedings during a day by bottle or by breast, and that she would probably be allowed to go home in about a week. That was really good news, so we thought

When she would come exactly, was unknown yet, but we were asked to bring the carseat for her, so they could test if she fitted in it and if she wouldn’t get any problems with her breathing and such when she was in it. So we brought this carseat last night, and they tested it out last night (by the way, the carseat is a little bit too big (Isabella is only about 4 lbs, and just too short for it), so we can buy an extra seat for her this afternoon for the first week(s)).

Yesterday, when we visited her, I noticed that she was missing a cable on her body, as they took off the cable which they use to measure the oxygen in her blood. The nurse asked us if we didn’t notice anything else, and at first we didn’t as she was laying on her side, but it turned out that she also missing the feeding tube. They told us that this was done because she now took all feedings from the bottle,and they told us with that, if everything stays the same, that she could go home on Sunday.

Wow, that was really good news. I thought it was also a bit scary, which is not that weird of course, but oh well, it will be ok. We’re very happy about this news!! Really good news, and that it came on the day that marked her as being a month old (time flies), made it extra fun.

Tonight we will bring a new, and smaller, seat (this is one of the conditions to get her home.. in the Netherlands they do not make a problem out of it (well, not with Larissa back then anyways) and you can actually just hold your child, but over here things are a bit different, they don’t give you your baby without a fitting carseat.. oh well, it does make things safer, of course). So hopefully (and I expect it will be) we will be able to take her home this Sunday, we can’t wait!

Here’s some more photo’s of her without the cables in her face:

So, the next posting will probably be about her finally being home

Last week was a week full of surprises. First was there the helmet that she was allowed to take off, and all the other good news, and then we got to hear on Thursday that they wanted to try for the first time to let her drink from the bottle (the breast would be too heavy for her)! They didn’t expect that she would drink a lot, it was more to give her the taste of the milk, but unexpectedly she still drank a bit (4ml). She gets 28ml every three hours, so the rest was given to her through her feeding tube. Michelle was the one who gave her the milk:

The day after, on Friday, it was my turn. The nurse said that she didn’t think she would drink much as it was only the second time she tried to drink, a few ml would be all according to her. But what do you think? That little one drank 19ml of the 28, a lot more than expected. Isabella was really awake at that time, so this probably helped, but still, it was great to see her doing so well.

It was Michelle’s turn on Saturday again, and the nurse that was there at that time asked how it went on the days before Saturday. She said, after she heard how things went, that she expected it to end up somewhere between the 4ml and 19ml. But what do you think? She drank 27ml, almost everything that she had to drink at that time! Unbelievable, right? And that was not everything on that day, they also took out the tube that was up her nose for the extra air, so even that backup was not needed any more. That was another pleasant surprise for us, but not the last one haha.

Tonight, Sunday evening, we were at the NICU again, and on the moment we opened the door, we looked into the direction of Isabella’s isolette, but.. we saw the following:

An empty isolette? We didn’t know what happened, so we got kind of scared, but quickly the nurse told us what happened. They lowered the temperature of the isolette today, and that went pretty well, so well that Isabella now is allowed to lay in an open crib next to the isolette, without any extra heater. This means that Isabella now probably has no problems to keep herself warm. They do frequently check up on her now, to see if her temperature is still ok, and the isolette is still next to the crib, just in case she is cooling down, but still, it gives us some new hope that she can come home soon.. for now it all looks well.

Of course she had to drink again, she came up until 25ml, so the other three were given to her through the tube, but this was not really weird (and again it was above expectation) because, not long before she got this bottle, she also received 15ml through a bottle from a nurse. So in total she drank more than before. She is doing a bit better everyday, before you know it, she can come out of the hospital.