Pooped!

As Hope and Gracie enter their third week of post-womb life tomorrow, all I can think of is how pooped Jeni and I are. I know I've said it before, but the NICU is a giant roller coaster ride, prone to take unexpected twists and turns at any given minute.

Grace seems to be recovering from surgery well, although it's still too early to give her the "all clear" on the operation. We are very thankful that all signs are pointing in a positive direction with our "Gracie Girl," however. She visibly looked better today than we've seen her look in a few days. While sill sedated on the pain medication given to her after her operation, she was able to give my pointer finger a vice-like grip for about 10 minutes straight when we were visiting with her today. I love how tight she likes to hold on to my fingers and how she does not like to let go.

Hope, on the other hand, had an unusual day. While still on her feeds (1 cc of breast milk every 6 hours), she had 8 apneas/bradycardias from 7:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. YIKES! To fill our gentle readers in on these two new NICU vocab terms, apneas are basically when the baby forgets to breathe, and bradycardias are when the baby's heart rate drops. While these are listed in the chapter titled, "Typical Problems of Preterm Babies and Other Sick Newborns" in the Newborn Intensive Care: What Every Parent Needs To Know (2nd edition) book that our doctor gave us, the idea of our daughter forgetting to breathe makes Mom and Dad, in particular, a little on edge.

The funny thing is, however, that every day seems to pose these sorts of battles for Hope and Gracie as well as the countless joys of having them here. While we could sit and dwell on the apneas/bradycardias, we could just as easily dwell on the fact that Hope is starting, slowly but surely, to gain some weight and her cheeks are starting to puff up like a squirrel storing nuts for the forthcoming winter. It's too adorable for words (see picture below). For the time being, I've nicknamed her my "cheeky monkey." I just hope that this little monkey can remember to take deep breaths.



Here I'm washing out my "cheeky monkey's" mouth. I was told by the nurse that it tastes minty. Hope likes it a lot :) The "snorkel mask" is her CPAP device to help her breathe.