1st birthday countdown - devin's 5th month...

devin's 5th month brought his first "fun" holiday... halloween!!! i love halloween and if you read my blog regularly, you know i love a good excuse to dress devin up in ridiculous outfits, so this one was really great for me! he was a hotdog ;)

an adorable hot dog that will probably say "moooooom! why did you do that to me?!" one day.

another great thing that happened in this time period was his first smile! im sure the first smile is wonderful for all moms and dads, but after watching him suffer through the NICU i believe it was even more rewarding to me when i saw it! he hasn't stopped smiling since!

he really started watching toys and enjoying things more. he has a rain forest mobile that he just loved, loves actually, hes still intrigued by it today. in those days though, sometimes it was the only thing he would smile at despite everything we tried to do to get a smirk. it was such a fun time realizing that this baby has a personality that was starting to shine.

we got him a bumbo seat towards the end of this month that he wasn't quite ready for yet. i convinced myself he was so strong and loved sitting in it even though his head would get very heavy after a few minutes ;) if only i knew how quickly the squishy , adorable, newborn days pass, i would have savored it a bit more. oh well, im still doing stuff like that every day!

like i mentioned last night, we finally found a solution to his restless nights. he was just so uncomfortable sleeping flat and we ended up letting him sleep in his bouncey seat overnight. i didn't sleep very well because i didn't like the thought of that so i was very relieved when the napnanny arrived and devin actually slept through the night in it! im obsessed and have recommend it to everyone i know with a baby. devin still sleeps in it every night and he's almost a year old!

this is also the time when i first started this blog! here is my first blog post ever! im so glad im a blogger now. i think its great to look back on old posts now and i imagine it will be even better as time goes by. i hope devin likes it one day too.

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 ;)