Four Pounds!

Hi everyone! Just a quick note to let you know that over the weekend Bea broke the four-pound barrier (kind of like breaking the four-minute mile). On Saturday she weighed 4 lbs 0.9 oz, Sunday she was up an ounce, and today she gained nearly three ounces, making her 4 lbs 4.6 ounces! She's huge!! Well, she's relatively huge...

She has been doing pretty well outside of the incubator. She had a cold spell last night, and we had to kangaroo hold her to get her temperature back up. They also put her in some warmer clothes, including some fancy socks which looked suspiciously like baby-size versions of the compression socks I wore when I was pregnant. Now we just need to get Matt some compression socks to match. She had her second bath yesterday, which might have been part of the reason why she got cold. But, usually, when they are cold, they burn calories and lose weight -- obviously that wasn't a problem for Bea last night.

We are moving closer to getting her home. There are a bunch of procedural things that need to get done before she goes home, and they are all scheduled for this week. First, today she had a head ultrasound. Apparently, they do head ultrasounds in all cases where one twin died to make sure there is no brain damage to the surviving twin. It's kind of scary, but the doctors have told us that it's mostly just a precaution. Then, Thursday, she has a car-seat evaluation. For that test, they put her in her car seat for an hour with all of her monitors on to make sure that she doesn't stop breathing while sitting in that position. It's kind of common for preemies to have trouble because they are so little that they don't fit the seat right. Lastly, Matt and I have elected to take a baby CPR class.

Besides the procedural stuff, all Bea needs to do is learn to eat from breast/bottle consistently and she can come home. Sounds easy enough. Ha! Bea does really well when she actually decides to be interested in eating, but she's a little inconsistent. I'm now going to the hospital for more feedings, so we can try to get things ironed out and get her home as fast as possible - maybe next week sometime. We'll have to see.

We'll keep you updated!
Melissa