Wrapping Things Up (T-minus 3 Days??)...

So just to quickly update Anna's progress; not much is new on the Anna-front today. She is still taking her bottles on demand and doing good with taking them. It's a bit tough feeding her at this point because she is still learning the whole suck-swallow-breathe technique. But I am sure once she is home we will figure out what works best for Anna to help her out. It will also be a bit easier since she won't be on such a tight hospital schedule. Even though they have her on an 'on demand' feed, they still get very antsy if she doesn't finish her bottle fully in an allotted time. Whereas if Anna was home, SHE would be the boss. :)

Also, we have been asked to bring in the car seat tomorrow so they can perform the car seat test soon. There is no sense in getting us all excited to bring her home if she fails the test. If she passes the test, then we are now looking at a discharge of no later than Sunday. It's sort of borderline Saturday/Sunday because it will all depend on the doctors' discretion. She will be 5 days off caffeine technically on Saturday, but who knows if he wants to wait an extra day just to be safe.

We will have to bring her back in to the hospital on Tuesday because she will be due for her routine eye exam. I also have a car seat clinic appointment on Wednesday, so I hope Daddy is able to have some time off work because it's really important that I go to that clinic since she will be riding in my car most of the time.

Also, she had her first hearing test today and her left ears' results came out as inconclusive at this point. This just means that she has been referred for an additional and more in depth hearing test. They informed us not to worry too much because sometimes there is debris in the ear, or other environmental causes which can affect her test results. We look at it this way, if that is her biggest problem after being born so early at such a low birth weight, then we are really lucky! She is healthy and we'd like to think that she is happy too! ;) So we are pleased with that!

Unfortunately, due to Anna's small size, and very early age at the time of her discharge (35 weeks gestation), we would like to temporarily limit the number of visitors to only immediate family for a few more weeks. She is very susceptible at this point to infections and viruses and would probably have to be hospitalized if she catches even a common cold due to the fact that she's still a preemie (can't wait for flu season to officially begin *sense the sarcasm*). So lots of washing hands around her, and being careful not to visit if sick or suspecting that a cold is coming, etc.

So that's all that is new...we are SO anxious to finally have the little munchkin home with us! After 9 weeks in the NICU, it just seems so surreal that the journey is finally coming to a closing.



Marta & Arthur