Looking Forward to Sunday

We are looking forward to Sunday and finally having our welcome home party. It is supposed to be a gorgeous day out so we should have a nice gathering on the patio. As the doctor reminded me, Sarah is not allowed to make her official debut at the event, though she will be in her bedroom and you can go upstairs and take a peek at her if she is awake. Especially with this bad flu season, we just can't take any chances. We hope you all understand.

It should be a nice afternoon. We hope to see you there.

6 lbs. 6 ounces Today

Happy Birthday Auntie Castine

Mid February Report

Sarah continues to thrive at home.  She weighed in today at 6 pounds exactly.  Her pediatrician says she is doing wonderful.  She also got one of her set of shots.  We are spacing them out a bit to not overwhelm her little body.  She seemed to tolerate it well.  She continues to eat from the bottle better and better each day.  

We also swung by the NICU today to give them an invite to our little welcome home party.  We hope that some of the people that helped save her life would join us in our celebration. 

All in all it was a nice day. Sarah and I were on our own and while it was a bit exhausting, it was fun spending the day alone with my girl. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Welcome Home Open House Details...

It is with great gratitude to G-d Almighty that I am pleased to present to you the invite for Sarah Chaya's welcome home party. As you can imagine, we are overjoyed to have our princess home after 114 days in the Tarzana NICU.

Both Grandma Carol and Grandma Mimi have planned a little open house in Sarah's honor. In order to protect Sarah's immune system, she can be not in crowds of people. Therefore Sarah will not be making her debut at the event. However, hopefully you will be able to peek in at her and say hi that way. Thanks grandma for making this pretty invite!

As the date is quickly approaching, formal invites will not be going out in the mail (I don't have too much time to put together an address list), so this is your invite!

The open house is at our home. If you need our home address you can send an email to:

 sarahchayarees (aat) gmail (dawt) com

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers. We hope to see you March 2nd.

 No RSVP required

As with any picture on the blog, you can click on it to enlarge and save or print if necessary.

4 Months Old Today!!!

We took Sarah to the Doctor today for her weekly checkup. Dad, Grandpa and Grandma and I were taking bets as to what Sarah weighs. We can really start to see signficant weighs changes daily so we were all excited to find out how much she actually weighed. I won the bet with the weigh in of 5 lbs 8.5 ounces (I guessed 5 lbs 9 ounces) ! She has nearly gained a whole pound in the 10 days since leaving the NICU! The Doctor was amazed. It is all the hamburgers we feed her.
The baby girl is 4 months old today! I can not believe how time flies! We were praying so hard to have her home by this time and are so grateful she is home now! She is our little miracle. Happy 4 months old birthday sweet baby girl.

Do's and Don'ts - Containing Baby

Who Does Sarah Look Like?

Sarah

Mom

Dad

Do's and Don'ts - Fun Games for Baby

Wednesday morning

Sarah had a very good night. I took first shift at about 9:30, and she didn't fuss, spit up, or cry through the entire night. Erika took over at around 2:00-2:30, and Sarah continued to rest peacefully. What a great girl!

Today is the first full day with Nurse Amy. She is going to come during the week and take care of Sarah from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. so Erika can get some more sleep. I am back at work today, so Erika will need to be well rested in order to handle more of the overnight watch by herself.

Do's and Don'ts - Nursing Baby

Our First Outting

Pretty in purple.

Grandma feeds Sarah so well!

We ventured out today to go to our first pediatrician appointment in her office. I was very sure to not wait in the waiting room for even 25 seconds and asked all nurses in the office if everything they used had been cleaned immediately before our visit. It was all clean.

Sarah weighed in at 4 lbs 14 ounces! We are going to take into account that this is her first time on that scale, but, if it is right, she gained 5 ounces over her first weekend home!

Now a recap of the weekend. Sarah slept almost non-stop from the time we brought her home on Friday, until just about 9p.m. last night. That was some SOLID sleep! She did wake up a few times on her own to eat and we gave her the bottle. She ate almost all of the bottle a few times. Then her tummy seemed to be bothering her from about 9pm last night. She cried for hours every time we fed her, arching her back and spitting up a lot. That is normal reflux for preemies. We got her back on the Zantac to help alleviate some of that pain, and we know it will help.

Grandma stayed the night to help us out while we figure out the nursing situation, but it looks like we will have a new nurse by Tuesday.

24 hours down

157,656 hours to go.

Sent from my iPhone

First night

So. What can I say? After 114 nights and 113 days in the NICU, Sarah
Chaya is finally home. She doesn't need any oxygen normally, but we do
give her some when she is taking her bottle. She still has her nasal
feeding tube to make sure she gets all her food.

She slept most of the day yesterday. She loved the car ride home. She
loves her little bassinet. She loves getting down on the floor to play
with the dogs (kidding of course!).

Erika had arranged for a home health nurse to come from 11-7
overnight. So we could get some sleep. Unfortunately, the nurse had
bad cat allergies, and we asked her to leave at about 12. We felt bad,
but Sarah's health is paramount.

After we fed Sarah at 12, Erika took the first shift in her room. At
about 2:30, I awoke to warm Sarah's milk; I promptly went back to
bed! Erika gave Sarah her 3am feeding and then went back to sleep
around 3:45 after cleaning the feeding tube.

I again awoke at 05:30 to warm the milk. Erika went to our room to get
some solid zzz's and I fed Sarah. I've been watching Sarah sleep ever
since!

Sent from my iPhone

Sarah's room is ready for her to come home!

Erika took some pictures of Sarah's room. We love all the cute furniture and bedding! We're ready for her to come home.

Here's a wide view of the crib, changing table and dresser.

A closer view of the same.

A view of the rocking chair, bed, and Sarah's bassinet.

And, finally, a view of Sarah in that bassinet.

Friday report

Sarah began all of her feedings last night on the bottle. She tried four times in a row, which I think may be a record. Good job, girl! She never finished a whole bottle, but took between 10 and 20 mL each time. She's working on it and will be there soon, we just know it!

She lost a little weight last night (25 grams) and now is 2075 grams. That's still about 4 pounds 10 ounces, and we'll take it!

Thursday update - Happy 16 Week Birthday!

You never realize how busy you are until you can't find three minutes a day to post a blog update. Geez! I can only imagine how busy we will be when she comes home (soon!).

So. Erika and I have been really busy this week, her with the baby, me with trying to wrap up everything at work in anticipation of our impending homecoming. At this time, I can't say exactly when Sarah will be coming home (all I can say is "soon!"). Almost everything at home is ready for Sarah; we have even decided which outfit she'll be coming home in (Auntie Ruthie bought the winning outfit!). I installed the car seat bases in both the BMW and the MINI. Unless Erika takes the BMW in to the Toyota dealer and picks up that minivan she wants, we will be picking her up in the BMW.

Last night Sarah had a fantastic feeding, as she took all 50 mL in the bottle. Nurse Sonjah did a great job with her! When Sarah is awake and interested, she is really demonstrating that she can master the bottle as well as any fat, happy, full-term baby; the only problem is that she is not awake and interested at each feeding. She'll get there soon.

We have also started to say goodbye to all the nurses, RTs, and NICU staff. Since we don't know exactly when Sarah is coming home (it's soon!), we want to say goodbye to everyone just in case we don't see them again. Of course, we now end up saying goodbye to everyone every single time we leave the NICU. It is very emotional for us, as everyone there has kept our baby going strong and brought our dream of bringing her home that much closer. We love all of you!

Thank You!

Thank you to all of you who have bought the baby things from our registry! We have nothing for when she comes home, as our focus has been on her in the NICU and we haven't needed anything. We really needed them, and I can't wait to put them to use when she comes home, God Willing soon!

Car Seat Challenge

Sarah passed her "Car Seat Challenge" this morning. The "car seat challenge" assesses whether preemies who are almost ready to go home are prone to episodes of apnea (stopping breathing), bradycardia (slow heart rate), or desaturation (low oxygen levels) when seated in their car seat.

Yippe Sarah. One more step closer to home for you!