Getting in the Groove

We have found our NICU groove.. the security guards know me by name and it is feeling like an extension of our home. It's only been 16 days since Caroline was born, but somehow it feels so much longer. My hormones have leveled out significantly so things aren't looking quite so foggy.  Even still, a friend asked me this morning how everything was going and I just kind of threw my hands up. There are experiences that you really can't find the right words to describe how you are feeling and this has been one of them. Almost the type where you just start to laugh even though it's really not funny at all. I still am having to take one thing on at a time. My brain and emotions can only process and hold together a small amount of information at a time. Not the best quality right now as we are trying to get the house ready for Caroline to come home in the next couple of weeks. We are painting and playing musical rooms/closets so stress levels are a bit high in this house. Anyone want to take Daniel out for a drink... my treat :)   ?!?  

Caroline has been doing really well.  We are still working on eating.  She is a breastfeeding champ, but tires easily.  When I walk in to her room in the mornings she perks up and immediately begins to show feeding cues. I love that she knows me now and yet breaks my heart that I can't be there for every feeding. They have added fortifier to my breast milk to add a few nutrients and calories which she takes by bottle/feeding tube. We already have a picky eater. She does not like the taste of the fortifier. She scrunches up her face and spits the bottle out. So that is causing a little set back because then she has to be tube fed... and we can't take her home until she doesn't require the tube.   Her brady episodes are much further apart and she hasn't had the big "official" ones in awhile. We are still working on regulating her temperature so for now she is still in her little incubator. They want her expending her energy with feedings and not temp regulation. 

So really.. she is doing so incredibly well. What an amazing thing to see her develop into an interactive little girl as opposed to what we saw 2 weeks ago. 

I believe Whitaker is going to get to see her this weekend for the first time.  If you have read the first posts you know that kids have to be 4 in order to enter the NICU. Caroline is at an age now that they can wheel her to the door and he can just look at her. I've seen the little look on his face when people have unknowingly asked him questions about Caroline and being a big brother. He knows that she is too little to come home and has been a little bit sick so she has had to stay with the doctors. He has asked numerous times if he can please rock her to sleep. A mom (and friend) of a little boy in Whitaker's class stopped me at drop off and told me that she had asked her son what he did at school that day.  Her son's response, "Whitaker and I made medicine for the baby". Talk about a lump in your throat.