These last few days have been GREAT days for Lucy! She has been eating from a bottle and nursing like a pro, and she is gaining weight and will probably exceed five pounds when they weigh her tonight! Here's her progress report, and as you can see, she has mastered four of the five!
The last one about breathing is our hang-up right now. She is still engaging in "episodic breathing" which means that her breathing will stall occasionally. This is very normal for pre-mature babies, but they would have liked to have seen her grow out of it by 36 weeks of gestational age. They are going to give her some medication to see if they can regulate the breathing a bit. Hopefully the medications will work! Today they started talking to us about things we need to do before discharge - bring in the car seat, get her immunizations, etc - so I started to get really excited. Throughout the duration of her time in the NICU, I have avoided asking the question, "So when can we take her home?" because I didn't want to get my hopes up. Today, however, I couldn't resist. I asked if they thought it would be some time next week, and they said yes. I am still trying not to get my hopes up, but it looks like we might be looking at coming home within the next seven days!
Since she is so much stronger this week than she was last, and since she's hooked to fewer machines, we've been able to hold her much more. Today she and I snuggled for a good hour, and last night Rick held her for almost three hours. She is so sweet. It's hard to believe that I was a little disappointed at having a girl in the beginning - now I can't imagine having anyone else but her. I can't wait to introduce her to her big brother!
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