1st birthday countdown - devin's 3rd month...

i think devin's 3rd month of life was the best month of my life! he finally came home from the NICU after 79 days on 9/9/09! he was 2.5 months old when he came home but was only 37 weeks 6 days old at the same time! the fact that he came home before his original due date and of course the fact that he was perfectly healthy and didn't require any oxygen or monitors was just so satisfying for me. he weighed 7 lbs.at discharge, which was also pretty impressive. he really proved so many drs. and nurses wrong and amazed his dad and i. the day he came home was a busy one. we had "roomed in" the night before. this is when preemie parents spend a night in a hospital room with their child alone. we had to prove we were capable of taking care of our own kid. in many instances i think this is a great thing, but in some, its just degrading. devin didn't have any special equipment or anything we needed to learn and get used to, so it was just an uncomfortable situation. needless to say, the next night when he was home with us was totally different so i don't really see a point to the whole rooming in thing even though we loved spending alone time with devin, it just wasn't fun. nurses were bothering us for silly things all night and it was a really crappy room. so the morning he was being discharged was a loooong one. we had to sign a bunch of stuff and bring in proof that we had made appointments for his first drs. appointments after discharge. we had to wait for a pharmacist to come and explain how to administer medications, we had to watch a demonstration of how to mix formula in pumped breast milk for added calories and so much more that i cant remember!

this is one of his last NICU pictures. since we never got to get one of those newborn hospital pictures, this is the one i consider ours ;)

i finally got to dress my little one in his going home outfit and the nurse stripped him of all his last monitor wires! we finally had a cordless baby! i picked him up and stepped out of his little cubicle into the hall i think i almost died! it felt so weird/scary/wonderful. hospital policy was to wheel the moms out of the NICU in a wheelchair and i honestly couldn't have been happier about that rule. i felt like all the moms i had been watching for the last 11 weeks. i would see them sitting in the lobby waiting for their husbands to pull the car around. they would be holding their healthy baby and most likely had never seen the NICU- while i was going up to watch my son grow in a plastic box. man, i hated those women for the longest time, but today, i WAS one! the only difference was that i was sitting next to about 6 HUGE bags of pumped breast milk stored in little bottles that had been kept in the NICU freezer. oh well, to me, it felt normal.

driving home was crazy, fabian was driving and i was in the backseat with devin. every little thing made us jump and i was so nervous about devin not being hooked up to any kind of machine. for all his life we had relied on a screen to let us know he was safe and we didn't have that anymore! i dont know how i got over that! but i did... and quick ;)

finally home!

first feeding at home!

fraggle meeting devin for the first time. (devin is yawning not screaming in agony despite what it looks like). i think fraggle was like "hey! that was my bed you made for me pulled up next to your bed! why is there something in it now?"

this is the picture i stared at constantly while i was in the hospital. this is what i was waiting for the whole time!

here's what out freezer looked like... yeah, we literally had to duct tape it shut.

the day after he came home we ventured out for the first time to his first pediatrician appointment. the office was way too far away and the dr. was really weird. we didn't go back again but here are some pictures of how cute devin looked all ready to go!

we finally felt like a normal family. we had our healthy baby, home and happy. he liked his swing and liked to cuddle in his boppy and nap for a good part of each day. he was just a normal newborn and it was great! thats how i remember it at least. i know it was stressful and we didn't get much sleep but in my mom brain, i remember it as being a wonderful time. i think we're programmed that way so we force ourselves to make more babies!

devin really was easy going in those days. i would put on soft music and he would just relax and do brand new baby stuff. i was pumping every 3 hours and we kept him on a 3 hour schedule which included a diaper change, breastfeeding, then a bottle as well so that was pretty rough. pumping was just horrible but i did it for 7 months and im pretty proud of that! like i said, devin was laid back and just slept alot. we gave him tummy time a few times a day and he seemed to like looking at little toys placed close to him. he liked bath time also. even with all the new activities going on in my life it seems like i had alot of free time those days! devin was just a joy and getting to know him at home was just wonderful. it felt even more special because we had all worked so hard to get to  this point!

1st birthday countdown - devin's 2nd month...

devin's second month was much better by far than his first. things were looking up and devin began putting on weight steadily. i visited him twice a day for 3 hours or more each time. it was so difficult to just sit there and watch him through plastic. he slept for 90% of the day or more. he was still supposed to be inside of me and it was just insane to watch a plastic box and wires and tubes finish the gestational process for me. i settled into feeling ok about that fact. i wasn't overly angry about our new situation, although i did have my days. after the first month i just realized this was how it is, lets just go with it and try to make it bearable. i started bringing sweet comfort things in for devin. a stuffed lamb that was mine as a baby, soft blankets and part of his crib bedding to cover his isolette. it made me feel better and i like to think it comforted him as well. i would carry small pieces of cloth or washcloths in my shirt and bring them in to let him sleep on. babies, even tiny preemies can smell their mother very well.

i finally felt comfortable enough for friends to visit :)

by the end of the second month i got a call while i was away from the hospital. i panicked when i saw the number because its usually not good to get a call from the NICU. they told me that devin was being moved upstairs to the nursery. he didn't need to be in intensive care anymore! they needed the space for babies who did. i rushed to the hospital to check out devin's new pad and i felt like singing the alladin song "a whole new world"! it was wonderful! the babies had their own little cubicle type rooms with a nice rocker and a dresser type thing. they were spread out from each other and it was such a laid back atmosphere! downstairs was basically an open room full of alarms and critically ill babies with nurses rushing around all over. i took a deep breath that day. it felt great! after a week or so the big day came... devin was moved to a big boy crib! he needed to be able to maintain his own body temperature and he did great at it! so he got to keep his new open crib and we were able to take care of him easily and gaze upon our boy without squinting through plastic!

we were able to start offering him the bottle and i was able to let him practice breastfeeding as well. we would weigh him on a very precise digital scale before he breast fed and after to see how many ounces he took. this is his first bottle experience ever- i cant remember how many mls. he took exactly, i think something like 10! that is such a tiny amount but it was actually very good!

meanwhile, at home we were setting up his nursery. something i definitely didn't have done before being admitted at 22weeks! the only thing we had gotten actually was the wooden letters you can see on the dresser. fabian and i had painted them right before everything happened. it felt nice to know his room was ready and waiting for him!

so by the end of his second month of life devin was doing quite well. just learning to eat and putting on weight. he was still on oxygen but that was about it. he started getting just a tiny bit "chubby" (at least to us). i could'nt wait to get my boy home but knew he had a bit more of a journey to get there. more to come tomorrow ;)

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

i decided to take a great idea from a fellow blogger mama i found through michelle over at plus one. her name is emily and she has a darling, beautiful daughter named poppy who recently hit the big 1. her blog is called last train to pooksville. the link i provided starts you off at her first countdown post. there are 12 days left until devin turns one and what i will be doing each day is creating a post (with pictures of course) describing exactly what was going on in each month of devin's life starting with his first month. on the 12th day i will be making his birthday post! i so enjoyed knowing that emily would be pretty much forced to grace us with her blogger presence each and every night leading up to poppy's big day and loved getting to watch poppy grow all over again. so here goes...

devin's first month...
jue 23rd 2009 was the day devin was born. i had been in the hospital on the high risk floor for the last almost 5 weeks. i had a very difficult scary pregnancy. i started having bleeding at 5 weeks, just one week after i found out i was pregnant. for the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy i thought i was having a miscarriage pretty much every day. at 22 weeks i had yet another very heavy bleed and went to have my 20th or so ultrasound to make sure things with the baby still looked ok. they always had despite the scary unexplained bleeding. this time, things were not ok. i had no amniotic fluid. my water had broken at 22 weeks 6 days and i was admitted to the hospital. i was told i would stay there until i had my baby and the chances were that would be very soon. drs. gave me a less than 10% chance i would ever bring my son home alive. it was the most devastating day of my life. i was in complete agony over the aspect that my perfect baby could die and most likely would. drs. said the most a woman could go with 0 amniotic fluid is about 2 weeks and of course that still didn't give me much of a chance. fabian and i were asked to make a decision about whether or not we would want our son resuscitated if he came at some point in the 23 week mark because this was the "grey area". they would take life saving measures but they didn't recommend it. it was up to us.i refused to make that decision and fabian stuck by me. he told me things would be ok. our baby was strong and he would be just fine. i really wanted to believe him but man was it hard when every dr. and most nurses were preparing for the worst.

i laid in a hospital bed only getting up to use the lovely "bedside commode". i drank gallons of water a day and started researching preemies and pprom (preterm premature rupture of membranes). kanalen.org was a wonderful resource and taught me that there was real hope in a situation like ours. also, i started stalking the preemie parenting board on babycenter.com.

i started having contractions june 22nd overnight. the dr. checked me in the morning and it was official... i would be having a c-section today, at 25 weeks 6 days gestation. my baby was estimated to weigh 2 lbs. 3 oz and i was scared to death. he arrived at 10:51 am on june 23rd 2009. my birth story is actually awful, its here if you feel like reading it. this day began our NICU journey.

he weighed 2 lbs. 6oz and was 13.5 inches long. he was very sick for the first few days. he needed to be on the oscillating jet vent and his blood pressure was dangerously low. they had him on every possible medication to bring his blood pressure up to normal. nothin seemed to be working. we were told once agian we might lose our son. the first days were dreadful. it was such a blur. i was so scared and so happy and so sad all at the same time. fabian was very strong and of course remained positive the whole time. devin had jaundice and needed to be under the bili lights for quite some time. it seemed he was under those lights for months, but it was only a few weeks.

we had some wonderful nurses taking care of  devin for the first few days and i was able to interact with him on the very first day and hold him on his 3rd day. i started pumping breast milk about 20 hours after he was born and as his condition improved over the next few days and weeks, small amounts were finally introduced through his feeding tube.

first picture of the three of us together...

my first time holding him (and kissing him)...

things were very stressful. he was doing ok, but new things popped up each day. bad news, then good news, then worse news and so on. it was the most difficult time of our lives! i started doing kangaroo care after a week or so and it was wonderful. most of his nurses were great and allowed us to be very hands on. we bathed him, changed his diaper and held him alot.

the last week of his first month he was allowed to wear a real outfit! this is the first really happy picture of me, i was so glad to see him in a real baby outfit! i was so proud! the next day i was able to dress him myself! i hated that i had to be "allowed" to do things, but thats preemie momhood in the beginning. its hard, but oh so worth the wait! im a big fan of milestones and being mama to a preemie gave me waaaay more milestones to celebrate! devin hit so many milestones in his first month! coming off all blood pressure meds, coming off the vent, coming off c-pap, being held for the first time, first feeding, first bath, first time wearing clothes, first time taking a pacifier, first holiday (4th of july), and just plain surviving- not only surviving, but kicking ass at surviving were some milestones crossed in his first month. he had alot more to go, but we had made it a month and things were looking up. he was out of the woods... the dark scary part of the woods at least and things were becoming more routine and relaxed, well, relaxed isn't the right word, i guess things were just a tiny bit less horrible by the end of the month. each day, got more and more exciting as i slowly started to realize i had way more than a 10% of taking this amazing baby home after all.