1st birthday countdown - devin's 4th month...

devin's 4th month began with his original due date! he was due on september 24th 2009. all preemie mamas have mixed emotions when their child's due date rolls around and up until that day i really had no idea how i would feel. i ended up feeling happy and excited. i didn't have bitter feelings at all. im sure i would have felt much, much differently if devin was still in the NICU. thankfully he had been home with us for 2 weeks and we were already settling into a routine. for me, the day felt like a fresh start. i could finally stop thinking devin should still be growing inside me! this thought had haunted me his whole life up until that day. i finally had a "newborn" and i felt like i could put all the scary times we had gone through together behind us. to celebrate and capture the moment, my mom came over and we had a photo shoot. she was using her old 35mm camera that used to take great pictures. key word is used to... apparently the flash battery was weak and she may have been a little rusty as well and most of the would be adorable pictures came out dark and blurry. we did manage to get a few good ones though...

i think of this month as the month of the bouncey seat. devin loved his bouncey. he spent most of his time in there and by the end of the month, had taken to sleeping during the night in there too. we had issues with him sleeping flat on his back. the NICU had the head of his bed elevated for the entire time he was there. they did this in hopes of easing reflux symptoms which he never had. he never suffered from relux but i guess because so many babies do, they were trying to help. it really didn't help anything though and we were left to suffer the consequences at home. he was much more comfortable in an elevated position so we had him in the boppy at first, then the bouncy seat. both of them made me nervous because they are not for sleeping unsupervised. we found a solution the next month that i will talk about tomorrow. but basically, this whole month devin was in the bouncey seat. i dont know what we would have done without it.

he was still an easy going lovable little nugget and we loved getting to know him and catering to his every whim! i was getting used to life as a stay at home mom, i wasnt getting much sleep of course and fabian had gotten back into the swing of things at work. he didn't have nearly as many dr. appointments as i thought he would, just about 2 a month for the first few months. not bad at all. since he still slept most of the day, i spent alot of my time on babycenter.com talking to other moms of preemies who were going through just about the same stuff i was. it was a lifesaver at the time. we were all a little over paranoid about our newly non NICUized babes and it was nice to have some people to bring you back down to reality when you needed it ;) i really cant remember anything specific happening that was out of the ordinary this month so this will be a post with a bunch of pictures. devin got chubbier and cuter by the day, what a sweet, sweet boy!