Home Sweet Home

Lily has been home for a little over 2 weeks now. Time has FLOWN by. The doctors let her come home with a caffeine prescription and a heart rate and apnea monitor. She is tethered to the monitor, but she is home!! Here is our first family picture - crappy, I know, but it still is the first so we have to treasure it. This was after Kyle and I stayed the night at the NICU with Lily on her home monitor to make sure we could handle it (their idea - we pretty much knew we were ready). As you can see we look pretty tired.

It was kind of cold when we came home so we have her bundled up in her car seat - can you see the baby? That is her home monitor next to her.

That thing is super loud and it goes off if the leads that are attached to the baby fall off (which we very quickly learned happens like every hour). So we replaced it with a belt that has the sensors on it that velcros on. She wears it all the time except for bath time. Can you see the belt under her shirt? Or are you too distracted by her cuteness?

Ready for the car...when can I come home?

Lily passed her carseat test! That really just means that she can be positioned in the correct carseat angle for a half an hour and not have any respiratory or heart rate issues. Doesn't she look like a tiny nugget in this huge carseat? At the time the pic was taken (2 days ago? the days blur together now), she wasn't quite 5 lbs. But as of last night at her 8 pm weigh in, she was 5 lbs 1.6 oz. She is gaining more everyday.

Unfortunately, she is still having some trouble coordinating her breathing and heart rate, mostly while feeding, but occasionally while sleeping, since the doctors have taken her off caffeine. We were hoping that she might be able to come home this weekend, but the doctor told us this morning not to expect that and to give her a little more time. Disappointing news for sure, but Lily is in good hands at the St. Mary's NICU. I just have to keep reminding myself of that!

Gracie's a Cutter

I know we have been preoccupied with Lily, but I didn't think Grace would resort to cutting herself to get attention. I came home from the hospital the other morning and found that Gracie had two cuts - on on her back leg and one on her back paw. I have NO idea how they got there, but she did get lots of attention for all the blood...so I hope she didn't do it on purpose.

Gracie's bloody bed.

She did get peanut butter out of the deal so maybe it was worth it.

Happy Easter!

Look how cute MY Easter Lily is! This outfit, borrowed from Eloise Kubinza, is still a little big on Lily, but I couldn't resist dressing her in it for the cute bunny mittens! Eloise was another preemie that was in the NICU in December and a neighbor of my friends. When Cheri Stein made dinner for us last week, she asked Jodi (Eloise's mom) to stop by. She did with LOTS of clothes to borrow! Ellie was born at only 3 lbs 15 oz, so some of her clothes are already too small for Lily (as of last night she was back to her birth weight of 4 lbs 13 oz). It was good talking to Jodi about her experience - thanks Cheri for the introduction and dinner, thanks Jodi and Ellie for the loaner clothes!

Amy Forester has also lent some clothes from Nora to Lily and Jamie Moore has been great sharing her NICU experiences. And many friends have brought other gifts and food. Kyle and I appreciate all the love! It's overwhelming (in a good way!). Thank you, thank you, thank you. There are many who deserve individual shout outs - this blog post could go on forever with names and reasons. But I hope to personally thank all of you soon with REAL thank yous!! Via the mail - not just a someecard (even though, let's admit it, those things are pretty darn funny).