Happy two week birthday, Cordelia Rae! 🥳 In some of these photos you can see her "party hat" (actually an IV for her second blood transfusion, apparently the scalp is prime real estate for IVs in preemies). It was fashioned by one of the kind and creative night nurses.
As you can see, lately we've both been enjoying skin-to-skin sessions when we go to visit Cordelia. The feeling of her warm and tiny little body on the chest makes it all feel much more real, and we're thankful that we've gotten to do this so early on in her life.
We make the short drive to the hospital once or twice a day. We got a monthly parking pass that has already paid for itself while also making us feel like VIPs as we wave ourselves in and out of the garage at Swedish.
A little over a month ago Cee and Jeff got us a gift while Cordelia was still firmly in utero with no plans to come out anytime soon. It's a rainbow-casting window cling with a message that is very appropriate for our current moment: Keep Growing! 🌈 We've put it up in our front window and when the sun hits it scatters rainbows across the living room as a reminder of joyous optimism.
Cordelia has indeed been growing. She was born at 520 grams, and dropped to 420 grams in her first week (this weight drop is to be expected for all newborns, including preemies). She has since rebounded and is currently at 650 grams. The doctors say she will need to quintuple her birth weight before going home (in addition to a long checklist of other milestones). 📈
She is still on a breathing tube, but has graduated from an oscillating ventilator used during her first days to a NAVA ventilator, which means she is able to take her own breaths around 60 percent of the time and the machine kicks in as a backup. She had a PICC line which had been providing medicine and nutrition directly to her heart, but that was removed the other day meaning one fewer set of wires and less clutter at her bedside. Now she is getting all her food directly from mom's (fortified) milk, which is pretty cool.
We've received so much love and food and support and messages of encouragement from you all. Special thanks to Amy and Kenneth for lending us their milk freezer and babybrezza sanitizer (for sanitizing and drying pump parts) just in time for us to start freezing milk because we have filled our allotted freezer space at the NICU for now. 🍼
Danny's mom Sharon has been staying with us and helping out tons with cooking and cleaning, and Danny's dad Jim arrives today. Alyssa's mom Tracey is returning on Sunday for her second visit so we'll have a full house! Luckily we've got the space in our new home, which in retrospect we are so thankful we got when we did.
Thank you all again for your concern and care, hopefully this little update gives a bit of perspective on our lives over these last couple of weeks. Now on to what you're really here for: the pictures! 💕
