Well, we are home!  It only took four months and one week.  We could have done it in 4 months, but this little lady would have come home on a feeding tube, and I’m telling you…from just the one night we’ve had her home, one more tube coming off of her could have done me in.

I spent Sunday night through Wednesday morning at the hospital, full time.  My goal was to get her to eat the minimum required on her own, without an NG tube.  And she did it!  She gained weight and is doing well.  Turns out this baby doesn’t like to wake up a lot so she cluster feeds, or eats a TON in less meals.  This works for me, especially at night, but waking her can take up to an hour of wiping her face with a cold cloth and leg massaging.  She loves her some sleep.  I totally get it.  But I’m not a fan of this 3-5am time slot where waking and feeding takes FOREVER.

We had her first appointment with the pediatrician today.  She is a lovely lady and said that Coraline is doing swimmingly for her adjusted age.  she is between 25-75% on height, weight, and head size.  She is below 5% on her actual age.  Awww….  That’s ok.  She’ll catch up.  The office was very good about providing us a special entrance away from other patients to protect her from the danger.  This brings me to our update on Lockdown 2013.

We really would love to have visitors.  Please, if you’re thinking, “Oh…they want to be alone with the baby…”  You’d probably be wrong.  We have had this baby for 4 months now.  We are going to be trapped in this house with her for awhile (more on that later).  So please, come visit!  We are in the tail end of RSV season though, so there are a few rules and precautions that we have had to add to the visitations.

• Please do not be offended when we come at you with hand sanitizer as you walk in the front door.  You may be doused in it.
• If you have been sick, or if anyone else in your house has been sick for the past week, skip the visit.
• If you have a tickle in your throat, be overly cautious and don’t visit.  But you should start taking Zicam right now.
• If you are a smoker and you would like to visit, please don’t be offended if you’re asked to change into a short we have here.  Even residue from cigarette smoke can be very dangerous to these micropreemies.
• If you have kids, please leave them at home for the time being.  They may seem totally healthy but could be carrying any number of viruses or germy germs.  I don’t dislike your kid, I am just trying to keep mine as healthy as possible.

So, you may be saying, “That’s lame.  Kids need to get sick to build up their immunity.”  And I don’t disagree with that, unless the kid has a compromised system, especially her sad lungs.  Coraline was born with a severe disadvantage.  She was born at almost 26 weeks gestation, which was not enough time to get her lungs ready for the outside world.  What they will usually do in those situations is give the mom 2 steroid shots over the course of 6 hours.  That helps with lung development and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a kid that doesn’t have to live on the vent for two months like ours did.  I didn’t have 6 hours when I came to the hospital.  Once they found out what was wrong with me, they said I would be in surgery in a half hour or I would be at risk for a stroke.  So between her early arrival, and the damage that the vent did to her little alveoli, she can’t afford to get sick until her lungs are done developing.  Her pulmonologist said that once she’s about three she will have developed what lungs she will have.  When she gets sick it will just push her farther back.  We’re not cool with that.

Please do not be upset that we will not be able to bring her out to functions either.  In addition to her being a fragile little peanut, it is the biggest pain in the ass to get her from one place to another with all the stuff she’s attached to…one more reason I am so grateful she is off the NG tube.  Her oxygen tank and monitor go with her everywhere.  Andrew and I will do our best to come do things, probably not together for awhile, but Coraline will be staying at home.

What I would LOVE to do is to have a big party so everyone can come see the new addition and all the fabulous work Andrew did on that house before the baby came home.  Sadly there will be none of that in the foreseeable future.  Boo.

We’ve come too far to start falling back.

A few pictures to see how far we’ve come…

Coraline on Day 1

Coraline on Day 128

She’s pretty darn cute.