More Suprises from Miss Sarah

We arrived today at the hospital to find out that Sarah had been moved to the more stable wing of the neo-natal ICU overnight. Apparently there were quite a few preemies and twins born last night, so Sarah is now in an open room that just has lots of little curtains that can seperate the babies. Sarah was a little cold this morning, though, so the nurse decided to put her back in the incubator for a few more days. The good new, though, is that Sarah is now up to 4 pounds, 6 ounces, and has been breathing so well that they decided to remove the nasal tube for now. Sarah's first practice feeding with Joella went well today too, so we will see how well the feedings have progressed by the end of the week. We are still able to hold Sarah outside of the incubator and we have started cradling her more and more instead of just doing skin-to-skin contact.

Sarah's New Bed...

This morning we were excited to find out that overnight Sarah had graduated to a crib. She is bundled up like a little burrito and now has to wear thick, long sleeve outfits, but we can still strip her down and have skin-to-skin snuggle time. Sarah is now 4 pounds, 4 1/2 ounces, and we will see this week if she is ready to start taking her own feedings.

Such a Big Girl Already

Sarah is now over 4 pounds and 2 ounces so she continues to feed very well. Sarah has been off of the dreaded CPAP mask for quite a few days, but she still does use the nasal tube to help push in oxygen (at the same level as room air). Sarah's temperature has been great lately so any day now the nurses may move Sarah to a crib instead of the incubator. It is great seeing our sweetie grow, but we do know that eating without the feeding tube is one the biggest hurdles to be faced. As you can see by the picture below, Joella and the nurses have started to give Sarah a few drops of milk from a syringe followed by having her suck her thumb. These exercises will slowly build up to her feeding completely on her own over the next month. It is a good sign that Sarah seems to squirm quite a bit around feeding time so maybe she will end up suprising us all.






Of course, here is what you really want to see, more cute pictures of Sarah...

One Month Old Today!

Sarah turned one month old today and mommy had another good visit with her today. Aunt Lisa also stopped by before lunch and hopefully Sarah will get to see her again tomorrow. Lisa gave Joella and I a bunch of books that we put in Sarah's hospital room, so every day we get to choose a different one to read to the little sweetie. Sometime mommy sings to her, but daddy isn't trying that yet. Sarah opens her eyes much wider now when she is awake, but once she is sleeping on mommy's chest, she is out cold and snoozing soundly.

We are also having quite a few visitors come by this week on the way to Joella's family reunion in Tennessee. We will definitely miss going, but at least we will get to see a few of our relatives over the next week. Josh, Ashley, and Annaliese came by for dinner last night and then drove all night long to Tennessee. Even though they only visited for a few hours, Annaliese did an excellent job showing us how much more work we have to do to make our house baby proof...that girl is an adorable little hurricane!


Just look at that cute face...

She enjoyed giving pets to Mollie (after playing with all of our newspapers of course)...

And Mollie gave Annaliese kisses back...

Mollie and Lucy's doggie cousin Cocoa continues to behave well at our house, but she did give us a scare yesterday morning when she got her head stuck under our fence while going after a bunny. Our neighbor heard Cocoa squealing and helped to rescue her from under the fence picket. Cocoa was not hurt and she is doing fine. In fact, she now has a replacement spot at our house for the wood spool that was left behind in Arizona...

Even though Lucy's barking and Cocoa's whining drive us crazy sometimes, the dogs are getting along very well and Lucy and Cocoa were giving each other licks this weekend.

Sarah the Sweetheart Keeps Growing

Sarah is now up to 3 pounds and 11 ounces and she continues to feed very well. The doctors are now also having Sarah stay on the nasal tube for 9 hours and she only has to endure 3 hours on the CPAP mask. Mommy was also able to give Sarah a sponge bath today and she didn't fuss too much at all. Below is a picture of Sarah snoozing peacefully before snuggle time with mom and dad today. In this picture, she had a good grip of daddy's snuggly blanket.

Below are two pictures of clean Miss Sarah right after mommy gave her a bath and put a new outfit on her.

Sarah's First Outfit

Today the nurses put an outfit on Sarah and she sure looks cute. It does make changing her diaper a harder task, but Sarah looks much older in her outfit and it is hard to believe that in a couple of days she will be 4 weeks old.

Sarah continues to do well, but she does still need the CPAP mask and she is limited to just 3 hours on the nasal tube every 12 hours. The nasal tube is much more comfortable for her, but she is still having a few breathing episodes when not on the full CPAP mask. Either Joella and I always try and hold Sarah for the 3 hour session during the day, but her nightly nasal tube session is in the incubator.

A Great Father's Day Weekend!

I had a great Father's Day visit with Sarah yesterday and enjoyed a good couple of hours of snuggle time with her. She tooted during the last half hour so I volunteered to change her stinky diaper once we got her back into the incubator. I managed to get her diaper off pretty easily, but before I could finish wiping her down she spewed poop all over the incubator. Believe me, she could have outdone a little boy peeing. While I tried to keep her as clean as possible, Joella "helped" by laughing hystericly for over a minute. The good news about this adventure was that now Sarah has a cute Little Mermaid sheet. The picture below is of Sarah last night being upset with her tongue sticking out while the nurse was changing her sheets. Mommy was able to get her settled back down pretty quickly and she was happy snoozing with her Ariel blanket when we left.

This morning the doctor called us and let us know that Sarah would need her first blood transfusion today. The transfusion went well and Joella could tell that Sarah was much less pale this afternoon. When Sarah was born, the doctors told us that she would probably be anemic at some point and that premies often need multiple blood transfusions over the first two months. Sarah has done a good job not needing her first transfusion until she was more than three weeks old. Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy Father's Day this weekend...it was definitely wonderful and one that I will never forget.

Above 3 pounds!

Sarah continues to do well and is now above 3 pounds. As of last night, she weighed 3 lbs, 1 oz. She is doing great tolerating her feedings and is almost up to 1 ounce of milk at each feeding, which are every 3 hours. She also had her IV removed, so all of her nutrition is coming from breastmilk now. She is still on the cpap machine, but gets to come off of it for up to 3 hours at a time so that we can hold her. Her breathing is much improved from last week so the cpap is definitely helping, but she really hates it! They will slowly increase the time that she is off of the cpap to help wean her from needing it. Sarah's bilirubin count has finally gone down enough that she should be done with the phototherapy for good...so no more sun tanning for her!

Below are a few pictures and a couple of video clips that we have taken over the last week or so. One is of daddy's first diaper change. He did a great job...too bad it was just a wet diaper :) Sorry if some of the pictures are a little fuzzy...we try to take them without the flash so it isn't too bright for her little eyes. We hope you find them as cute as we do...

Sarah on her cpap machine

Sarah after snuggle time with mom

Daddy's first diaper change

Little princess with the hiccups

Sarah Continues To Put On the Ounces

Sarah continues to eat very well (by digesting through a feeding tube) and is now just a few grams shy of 3 pounds. Earlier this week Sarah started to get stressed breathing on her own, so the doctors put a CPAP mask back on her in order to push air into her lungs. The oxygen being pushed is at the same level as room air, but the pushing of the air just helps Sarah's under-developed lungs and allows her to conserve more energy for growing. Although we can't hold Sarah with the CPAP mask on, the nurse can hook up a nostril air tube for an hour or two so we can hold Sarah without making her work too hard to breath. If Sarah continues to digest the milk well over the next few days, she will probably go completely away from the nutrients in the IV line.