Monday, October 31, 2005

Best Halloween Ever!

Today was the second best day of my life. It is 7 weeks since the best day of my life - the day Aerin was born. I am still in joyous shock that she ate so much on her very first try. She would have eaten even more, but her breathing became shallow, so they felt it was best to stop. She got the rest through her feeding tube. The suck-swallow-breathe is hard for a preemie and they usually start out with just a few cc's. I knew she had a strong suck, but I thought she might have problems breathing and swallowing at the same time, especially since she's just getting used to the cannula. She was in the 30s percentage-wise all day long, by the way.

The good news kept on coming. She gained weight again -she's 3 pounds, 6 ounces! She's obviously turned a corner and it's so thrilling. Her day nurse, Tara, said that she's so on-target developmentally that it's scary.

I'm a little brokenhearted that I wasn't there for her first bottle. There's no set schedule for when the speech therapist comes to the NICU, so the nurses couldn't tell me when she'd be evaluating Aerin. She checked Aerin's mouth to be sure that everything was structurally sound and it was. You can bet that I'm going to be there for the bottle tomorrow. She only gets 1 per day for a while.

The next step is moving out of her isolette to an open-air crib.

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