Rites of passage

So about a week ago Sara earned her true passage into motherhood when Nora decided to go poo while Sara was changing the diaper. Nora managed to get the isolette dirty as well, causing a change out of the whole device. Last night I earned some of the right of fatherhood when Nora vomited on me. She managed to get all the way down my sweater to my jeans, but she was clean. So the lesson we can learn from this is that my daughter is practicing to be an Olympic sharpshooter.
Enough of my ramblings, here's the pictures!

Hi everyone!

I'm a wild child

Eating is hard, I need a nap

growing places!

As of this evening Nora is weighing in at 4 lbs 3 oz and measuring 16 2/3 inches long.  She's too long for some of the preemie outfits already!

I did not blog yesterday because I took extra naps instead.  Josh and Jessica were here for a few days and they helped us round up a deep freezer and do some other things while they were here but I skipped out on napping to get things done.

Now for what you really want--pictures!

These are from yesterday:

Howdy, folks

Fingers are delicious

And this one is from today:

Getting some snuggling/pacifier action in before bedtime.

Weigh in

Guess who made it to 4 pounds and 2/5 ozs?

If you guessed anyone besides Nora why are you reading this blog?

For those that did answer correctly here is your prize: another daily pic!

Growing and growing

Later today Nora's aunt and uncle will be here to visit, or however you say aunt and uncle in Cajun,  but for the rest of y'all here is your daily Nora fix.

M

Nora got a new outfit today.

The NICU staff found a realreal cute baby's first xmas outfit for us.

Christmas!

More Nora

Nora is progressing well at breast and bottle feeding however it still wears her out. The evidence is below. Apparently Nora hasn't learned to sleep with her mouth closed yet.

Hope everyone is doing well and have a merry Christmas eve!

eating is hard work

Nora is hard at work learning how to eat from Mom and from a bottle but not much else is going on so here are a bunch of pictures. 

Dad and  Nora having a serious chat

Wide awake after lunch

Getting ready for bed in one of my fancy new outfits

Big yawn

Checking things out 

the empress' new clothes

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you Nora Wearing Clothes!

In other words, Nora's IV came out today so she gets to wear clothes.  Hooray!

She is up to 3 lbs 13 oz and our practice breast and bottle feeding is going well.  Tonight during her tube feed she seemed a little annoyed with her pacifier and I'm choosing think that its because she wasn't getting any milk from it :)

Santa baby

Santa visited the NICU at St. David's yesterday!

bottles and burps

So yesterday was a busy day. So busy Sara and I forgot to post anything. Grandpa Wes and Debbie came for a visit. They got some quality grandparent time in and there were some pictures taken. My dad should send me those photos so I can share them with everyone :)

I also got to clean up Nora after she burped up her lunch, and then I got to clean it up some more. I guess I should get used to that.

Later, Sara and Nora got to practice bottle feeding. I got some pictures as you will see below.

"Look how tiny I am, I fit on my mom's forearm."

 "What is this? I don't know... wait is there food?"

 "I like food, maybe we should keep trying at this."

"I am asleep in my dad's arms with my new hat!"

So that's all for this morning, I'm sure Sara will have some more news to report later. Have a great day everyone!

food for thought

Today's news is all about food.  Nora tried breast feeding for the first time today and seemed to be interested and generally comfortable with the idea.  We will be "practicing" breast feeding once a day until she gets the hang of it. Tomorrow she is going to try taking a bottle for the first time with the help of a speech therapist.  All of these things are leading to no more feeding tube which could still be a few weeks away but progress is being made!

I'm also going to be making some changes; the doctor thinks that she might be allergic or sensitive to cow's milk so I will be going dairy free for the next few weeks to see if it makes a difference in the color and consistency of her poop.  I'm not super excited about this turn of events but whatever our girl needs me to do, I'm on board!

And since you were patient enough to read all of that, here is a picture of her sleeping on my chest.

dug is a goober

Not much happened yesterday.  We did talk our way into holding her 3 times instead of just two and Dug helped with bath time tonight without incident.  Nora seemed much more mellow about bath time which made it much more fun since she wasn't screaming the whole time.  

Also, I have photographic evidence that Dug is a complete and total goober.  Please see below.

So this happened.  

Immediately followed by this.  What a goober ?!?!!

Hanging out with Mom.  

Extreme close up!

The occupational therapist taped a picture to the top of my isolette
 so that I have something to look at when I'm awake.  

Making faces--she almost looks like she's smiling :) 

funny face

Still nothing new to report; right now we're just eating and pooping and sleeping.  Our next big milestones will be when she gets up to eating a certain amount at each feed and she's pooping it out in a timely manor then we will start working on other methods of feeding.  That should take a week to two weeks though so there is plenty of time to just enjoy the stage we're in!

Last night when I went in she was wide awake and making all sorts of funny faces.  They probably say this to all the parents but every doctor and nurse that we talk to raves about how cute she is.  I may be biased but I agree :)

Enjoying some quite time with my pacifier, wrapped up like a burrito   

Funny faces!  

zombie parents are zombies

Long story short, Nora's schedule of feedings and such got shuffled today so we got shuffled and didn't take naps.  We realized just now driving home from a later-than-usual trip to the hospital that we forgot to take pictures today.  She's still cute though.  

Good night!

Sara 

Nothing news is good news

So today the nurses struggled to find something to report to us. Sara told them that if they have nothing to report we are happy with that. So we can report that there was very little different today compared to yesterday and here's the pics o' the day!

a breath of fresh air

Big news of the day is that her nasal cannula (the tube in her nose that was helping her breath) was removed and she's doing fine breathing on her own.  Short pause while everyone does a happy dance in celebration.

Okay, that was good.  Nice dancing, guys.  

In other news she is now weighing in at a whopping 3 lbs 10 oz.  Now for the pictures (that's what you came here for, right?)  Today's guest photographer is my friend Sonja who drove up from Louisiana to help me put the nursery in order and to drive me around while Dug is at work this weekend.  

This was first thing in the morning while she still had her nose thingy in place.  Holding her this evening without the nose thingy and with a smaller feeding tube was much, much easier.  

She's learning how to suck using this purple pacifier.  They put the pacifier in her mouth while she's getting food through her tube so that she can associate sucking with food.  Doctors and nurses are so smart! 

This is right after the tube thingy came out of her nose but before the smaller feeding tube went in.  

This was probably my favorite picture of the day.  She was pretty alert --looking around a  lot and doing some finger sucking right before meal times.  

hungry hungry hippo

Not a whole lot happened today which is good because we could use less excitement.

Here are the basics:

• Both Dug and I got to hold her today (pictures below). 
• Two poopy diapers!
• They are increasing the amount of milk she's getting in her feeding tube pretty steadily--she went from 4 cc yesterday to 8 cc tonight and we hear that she's going up to 10 cc later tonight.  She's a hungry little girl! 
• She seems to be gaining weight as well--tonight she weighed in at 3 lbs 7 oz

Dug and I cooked a little for the weekend tonight and discovered why new parents shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen in the form of three minor cuts and two minor burns.  However, between food that people brought us, food that we cooked, and food that people brought us that we heated up and portioned out we should be able to eat through the weekend without getting more involved than the microwave.  

Sonja is here for the weekend and we have grand plans for baby stuff organization; hopefully we will be posting pictures of a mostly finished nursery soon.

The nurse and I were laughing at Dug who couldn't figure out his  how to take a picture all of a sudden.

Dug getting in his skin to skin time with Nora

Another picture of her sleeping because we just can't get enough pictures of her sleeping.  

Nora gets a Bath

Today we were able to assist in giving a bath to Nora. She stays in the isolette but an absorbent pad is placed underneath her. She then gets what is essentially a sponge bath. Instead of sponges we used wet gauze pads with soap. The Nurse was there to guide us the while time in case we tripped off any of the million alarms attached to Nora.

I was too busy taking pictures to wash Nora, but I did dry her off, just as important.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!