Maia Means Brave

In Maori Maia (pronounced like Maya, Mya Myer) means Brave. And a brave little thing she is.

Because she was such a big girl at birth they had to test her blood sugar levels. They tested by pricking her heel to take blood. All up she had about 6 heel pricks 3 of which showed her levels were low. On her second day in the world she had to go to the special care unit to have a glucose drip inserted into her poor little foot to help until her body started to regulate it's blood sugar.
Our beautiful girl was very brave and in the end hardly flinched with the heel pricks.
What was a bit funny was seeing her next to all the little tiny premature babies in the special care unit, she towered over them :)

She has since had another little hiccup. We arrived home on Wednesday and I noticed while feeding she had stopped breathing. A splash of water on the face snapped her out of it and after mentioning it to the midwife on her next visit she spoke to a paediatrician who said she should probably come back into hospital to sus it out. So back to hospital again for the night where they figured it could be a combo of a refluxy type thing where the milk comes back up and her airway shuts off to stop it flowing over, and also that she hasn't quite mastered the coordination required to breathe, suck and swallow so while sucking forgets to breathe. It hasn't been helped by the fact my milk came in in a major way and so we've had to work around that too. As my milk flow has settled down so has the breathing issue, and anytime it does happen it takes her a few seconds and a few blows of breath on the face to snap her out of it.

Those little bumps in the road aside she is such a healthy, lovely, gorgeous, sleepy, placid baby. Hope that last word stays that way, she could very well mix it up on us soon and really start exercising her lungs and voice a bit more :)

Here's the latest pics of her hanging with the whanau, not enjoying her first bath, and admiring her daddy.