Perspective

We've had some fun comparing Clara to different things--a cabbage patch doll, a six-month-old cousin, a quarter, and normal-sized baby socks. Enjoy.

One Month

  This week we celebrate both one month of age and one week at home. As of Monday, she weighed 5lb. 7oz. and is getting bigger every day. And my favorite part? She sleeps at night (albeit noisily). It's so nice to have a baby that sleeps independently at night. She's so small that I don't dare let her sleep longer than five hours, so I woke her up this morning at eight.

Nathan is also loving being a big brother. He can say her name. He likes to peek at her in her crib. He brings her toys and blankets. When she cries, he smiles and says either "noise" or "mad." And, to help me give her a bath today, he put a bar of soap in the bath water.

She's Home!

Clara came home on Thursday, after 25 days in the NICU. Although still jaundiced and anemic, she's eating well, so they let her come home. Nathan was excited to meet this mythical Clara person everyone has kept telling him about. When he first saw her, he smiled, said her name, and patted her head gently. He's been really good with her, and has only tried to pick her up a few times.

She came home a full pound heavier than when she was born. The two pictures at the top are a comparison of Nathan and Clara the day they came home. Although Nathan was a long and skinny baby, he looks quite chubby by comparison. He weighed nearly twice what she did.

We are very excited to be moving on to a new part of our family's story. Thank you to all who helped us get through the last two months, with the encouragement, meals brought in, and above all, the hours and hours of babysitting. You all have been a tremendous blessing in our lives. And if you'd like to meet her, we'll be sticking close to home, we're welcoming healthy visitors.

Slumper Party's Over

Yesterday the morning nurse was telling me about another NICU baby, name of Cara, who was pulling Clara's same tricks: content to be tube fed every feeding, very sleepy, and just content to exist forever in-hospital. She said that these two with similar names were in a slump and should get together for a slumper party.

Clara's still having problems with high bilirubin, leading to a diagnosis of breast milk jaundice, which can last up to six weeks. She's usually so yellow that I'm getting used to the color, and yesterday when her levels were down, she seemed unnaturally pale. She's been on and off the bili lights her entire life. She must be getting used to wearing her lovely eyeshades, although she hates getting them put on. (We're hoping this experience doesn't lead to a lifelong love of tanning.) The high bili makes her tired, so she doesn't eat well. Lab work also indicated yesterday that her hemoglobin is low, which could be contributing to her sleepiness. So they've started giving her iron, as well as a darby (?) shot, which will stimulate her bone marrow to make more red blood cells, to raise her hemoglobin levels.  After all this news, I was getting ready to gear up for an indefinite stay battling infant fatigue.

But the party is apparently over, at least for now. She ate well as usual last night when I went up to feed her. When I went in this morning, they told me she had only had one tube feeding all night, and had just taken off eating from a bottle. So, keep your fingers crossed that this lasts. As of 10:00 this morning, she'd had five consecutive feedings. I'm so pleased to finally be making some progress.

But I'm still counting on two more weeks. Two more weeks is what I said last week, and on Sunday, and it's what I'm telling myself today. You can do anything for two weeks. We won't count the days until they call us up one morning and tell us to come bring her home.

Busy Little Hands

This morning Clara was wearing socks on her hands. This, the nurse informed me, was so that she did not have to repeat the adventures of yesterday, when Clara twice pulled the feeding tube out of her nose, and once got two good handfuls of nice yellow poop. She likes to wait until the dirty diaper is off and the clean diaper not yet on to finish her business. I think she's staging her own little protest of still being in the hospital at seventeen days old. Now if she would only realize that her lack of eating is the reason she's still there.

She has been doing better and better at breastfeeding, and took a bottle well this morning. So we're making progress; it's just slow progress. The rest of us are coping pretty well, although I do confess that I'm just wishing for some good and simple physical exhaustion, and no more of this emotional and mental exhaustion mumbo jumbo. Because I'm just tired, tired of arranging babysitters twice a day, tired of a tired toddler whose schedule is skewampus, tired of always going and coming, tired, tired, tired.

I know we've been so blessed, that out of all possible outcomes we got the best one. We're so blessed to have so many people willing to help us out. And we are so blessed to have a healthy little girl who will some day maybe soon get to come home with us.

Almost All Together

Well, I'm home. That brings the home-to-hospital ratio to 3:1. We're going to use our best powers of peer pressure to change that situation.

But you're thinking, wasn't this baby not due for another six weeks? And not scheduled to come for three? Yes and yes. Here's the story.

Sunday morning, just as I woke up (very convenient, that, as it kept the sheets clean) I started bleeding. We called my mom to come get Nathan and we headed to the hospital. Once there, I started having contractions and my cervix was beginning to dilate. So, since we were so close to the 34 week deadline (2 days shy), they just decided to make a birthday of it. So we prepped for surgery and I waddled back into the OR, where I was welcomed by strains of Frank Sinatra singing, appropriately enough, "I've got you under my skin."

My platelet count had come up in the last two weeks, so I was able to have an epidural instead of general anesthesia. So I was glad to be able to hear Clara's robust squawk as they pulled her out. They took her into the next room to clean her up as they sewed me back together, and I could hear her cries through the closed door. That was very reassuring that we had a healthy spunky baby on our hands.

Although she's breathing on her own and doing very well, she's in the NICU until further notice. She was born before she learned how to suck, swallow, and breathe at the same time. So right now she's being fed through a tube in her nose. Once she's eating on her own she'll be able to come home.

Today when we went to visit her she stayed awake for a long time, just looking around and being generally cute. All the nurses say they've never seen a blonde baby with so much hair. And she loves to pull on the tube taped to her cheek with her long delicate fingers.

We've Had A Birthday, Shout Hurray

Clara Lois

4 pounds 4 ounces, 17.5 inches.

Baby and Mother are doing well.