Homecoming

T minus 25 minutes until we take Evelyn home! Tony has been cleaning cleaning all day in preparation for her coming and I have been at the hospital all day going over things the nurses have told me and signing a few papers here and there and taking all of the free baby stuff I can get my hands on. We are so excited and will take a video of her and Elijah's first meeting tonight.

Unfortunately, thus ends my illustrious streak of daily blogs, as I have been using the internet at the hospital in the time between feeding and sitting with Evelyn. Now, I am happily doomed to have non-existent free time along with no immediate access to the internet, so I will assign the task of trying to keep things updated to Tony, who can occassionally grab some internet access at work. We will see how it goes.

Love you all and thank you for all the well wishes, congrats, and support youve been sending our way!

Hotel Stay

So I am staying the night tonight at the hospital. I took them up on their offer of a free room for any mom that wanted to stay while their baby is still in the hospital. Its not the biggest room, or the quietest, but I am right next door to the nursery so I cant ask much more than a 15 second commute. We are still hoping to hear the pediatrish say that she can be discharged tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are some pictures from her first real sink bath a couple days ago that I got to help with!

By the end she was all tuckered out but look shiny and new with a pretty white bow.

Almost...!

Last night, I walked in for one of Evelyn's eatings and I noticed she had some stange sticky residue on her cheek. So I was about to ask the nurse about it when I realized that it was there because there used to be a piece of tape there which used to hold her feeding tube in place! Her feeding tube has come out! Apparently though they did not mean for it to be out already, Evie just decided it was time and she was the one that pulled it out of place. So they decided they will not put it back in unless she needs it.

So talking to the pediatrician this morning, he said she was doing really well with her bottle feedings (when I am not here for a feeding, they just give her a bottle with my breastmilk in it, which is awesome because that means Tony will be able to participate in those late night/early early morning feedings when she gets home!). She is doing so well that as long as she starts gaining weight, she can come home in a couple of days. DAYS! Those are the words the pediatrician used.

So the nurses have already started prepping me for taking her home. I have watched a few different videos about crying and carseats and i will watch one about infant CPR. They also have to do a carseat test where Evelyn will sit in the carseat for like an hour or two and they will monitor her oxygen levels and things like that. So I will bring in her carseat today or tomorrow so they can get that done. Hopefully by the time she is ready to come home I will have all this prep work done so it wont be delayed! Maybe she will be home by easter! I need to go buy a tiny tiny easter dress.

Real pictures

Cara and Eliza came to visit us at the hospital last night! It was soo great to just hang out with some cool ladies for awhile and just relax. They even brought Evie some cute cute outfits to wear since, hey, no one plans on needing premie clothes, so naturally I had none, but now i have some! Along with a supply of goodies and a snuggly blanket for Evie too. Thank you a gazillion times.
Also, Cara happens to have an awesome camera and photography skills both of which she graciously volunteered to us. So finally I have some good pictures to share with you all of little baby Evelyn.

She is doing so well! The IV has been unhooked and they should be able to take it out completely by the end of the day. One less wire to worry about. And she has been doing well in her feedings, so well that she has progressed to Stage 3 out of four, meaning that she can take all of her feedings by mouth! or at least attempt to. Stage 4 would be that she is eating well with each feeding so they could take the little tubey out of her nose. I still dont know when she will be coming home, but at this rate it seems like it could be soon!

Awake!

Not only referring to me being up this late, but little evelyn too! I was finally able to snap some pictures of her while she had her eyes open tonight. So far she has been somewhat of a night owl. She is more awake during the nightime eatings than the daytime, so I have made it to the nine pm and midnight ones for the past two days. It keeps me up late, but its also easier for tony and elijah too since its pretty much bedtime by the time i leave, so it doesnt seem like i am gone forever.
But anywhos, Evelyn was quite awake tonight.




And they also gave her a cute new hat to wear.

She had an awesome breastfeed tonight, so much so that they didnt even have to give her any milk through the tube! none! But unfortunately, her IV started leaking so after her dinner they had to take her to get a new IV placed.
But now I am just hanging out in the parents lounge, drinking a chocolate milk and waiting for midnight to roll around so I can go back and feed her some more! She has already gained a little weight

Oh yeah...

Wait a second, with all this new baby stuff going on, we dont want to leave you without some good old elijah fun time! I finally got to upload some of the pictures and videos we have taken over the past few weeks. First off, Tony and I took a weekend trip to Vegas! It was alot of fun to get away just for a day or two and play with grownups, i.e. there were lots of shiny blinky things that made us spend money.

Then the next week we got to go out to virginia for the big wedding! Not only a wedding though, we got to go to the zoo in DC and play with lots of cousins.

In one incident, elijah was dressed up as a little girl so we could anticipate how Evie might look in two years...

Elijah looooved playing with Papa Mickey in virginia

Tickling Lizzie!

Movin on uuup

Evie has been moved from an isolette to just a plain old crib thing that they put all babies in at the hospital. I wouldnt call it a crib, but you know what i am talking about. This means she is maintaining her own body temperature! Thats two things off the checklist now. the checklist being:
Breathing well on her own *check*
Maintain own body temperature *check*
Eating on her own

We are working on the last one. I am at the hospital right now working on that as a matter of fact. She had another successful breastfeed a little earlier tonight. Yay! I am staying for one more eating session then i will go home for the night. They feed her every three hours, so I came for nine pm and midnight. I will be able to come for a few tomorrow too since tony will be home. Then Mary will be here so I can stay here as loong as i want! I really dont want to that much but the more i do the faster Evie will learn to eat by mouth rather than nose tube. They even have rooms here for moms to stay in if they want to be here all the time for feedings and such. Free of charge! And there is a parents lounge with drinks and tv and you can borrow laptops (hence, this blogpost). They really are awesome here and i am so grateful for all the little (big) things that are making this as simple and stress free as possible.