Homecoming at last!

The big day that we've been waiting for 111 days has finally come....Rachel is now home!! We picked her up at the hospital around 9am Sunday and after all the last minute instructions, consulting with her Neonatalogist, signing paperwork we were able to give Rachel her first breath of outside fresh air.

She is still on 1/4 liter of oxygen, so we have a home machine that is on all the time, with spare travel tanks for when we have to drive her to the doctor appointments. Her doctor expects that she will be on oxygen for another 6-10 weeks. Her pediatrician will decide when its time to start weaning her off. She's also on 26mg of caffene per day, which we have to give her with a little bit of milk (and it tastes BAD). We had some initial trouble ordering it but they sent us home with enough dosage to make it through Monday and we'll pick up the perscription today. To put it in perspective, a can of coke has 2mg of caffene so you'd have to have 13 cans of coke to equal her dosage. WOW! We'll also have to get her weaned off of that probably around the time she starts going without the oxygen machine.

Enjoy the pics and thank you for all your thoughts and prayers for Rachel,
Rob and Jen

Weekend of Nov 14 pictures

Homecoming day!!

Less than a week to go!

Rachel is now 2860 grams as of her weigh-in last night, which is about 6 lbs 5oz. She's had a few apnea events the last couple days which has delayed her coming home schedule. The doctors have upped her oxygen to 1/4 liter and she seems to be doing better. They've also stopped her caffene to prep her for coming home. At this point they are thinking possibly late this week, Thursday-Saturday timeframe to release her, but that is still subject to breathing events. She's taking 55ml of milk at her feeds which are still every 3 hours, and they've put 22 calories in each feed. Probably around Wednesday they will give her the car seat test to make sure she doesn't have any events in it for at least an hour.

Enjoy this pics from tonights feeding, she feels like a regular sized baby now!

Love Rob and Jen

11-8-2009

1st Halloween!

Although she's still in the hospital, the NICU nurses like to dress the babies up for halloween. So Rachel's first costume was a fairy!

She is still progressing well, there's a possibility she might be home as early as this sunday (11/8) which would be a week before her original due date. We are going into overdrive this week preparing her room. The nurses say that she is taking her feeds well and earlier today she got through a whole bottle without 1 breathing event. Rob fed her a whole bottle of 48ml this evening. Although she was fussy at times, she also opened her eyes nice and wide and stared to greet her daddy back from his trip. She gets weighed again tonight, hopefully she'll have broken the 5.5lb barrier! Enjoy the pics!

11-1-2009

10-31-09