Grace and Hazel

We made it home today after 13 days in the hospital. It was hard enough for me, for Jenn, the change must have been mind-numbing. Seeing our apartment was an incredible relief. At the same time, we were struck by the notion that we were such different people than when we raced across town towards CPMC two weeks ago.

On March 20th, we were a scared couple, 29 weeks pregnant, afraid that their hopes and dreams were crashing down around them. On April 1st, we are no longer pregnant and our hopes and dreams are pinned to a tiny little girl weighing a little more than 2 and three-quarters pounds that already seems stronger than either of us could hope to be. I can’t fully describe the strangeness of our home without her, though she was not yet really a part of it. Equally strange is the task of getting ready for her when she is already so close by.

Rather than try to explain it, I will just say this: When we can’t seem to stop crying out of relief or frustration or fear, we can close our eyes and think of this…

One Quiet Minute of Grace from Grace Topliff on Vimeo.

…and everything we go through becomes irrelevant.

Share on Facebook

IMG_0289.JPG, originally uploaded by Lincoln Topliff.

I am running out to check out of this place, but I almost forgot the most important, wonderful, amazing, fantastic, small, beautiful, warm, precious father moment of my short father-career.

More later from Casa de Topliff

Share on Facebook

We take the little encouraging signs when we can. The other night, Grace was introduced to her future during her regular feeding (through the tube) she made little sucking motions. This is something we are really excited about because it looks…well…normal. Doctors and nurses are happy but they seem to do fewer backflips. They call this “recreational sucking” and it is encouraged but still only the first of several steps toward breastfeeding.

The key to growth and feeding is the one-two punch of sucking and swallowing. This takes coordination and instincts that shouldn’t appear for a few weeks. As it is, a tiny tube still goes to her stomach and milk is dripped in there every two hours. She is currently getting 7 milliliters of milk per feeding and is tolerating that very well. They have been increasing her feeds for a little while. First they tried 1 ml every day, then every shift and now every other feeding (twice a shift). That she is tolerating this is very encouraging, even to those wet blanket doctors! She will max out for awhile at 14 ml and start putting on weight. This also means that she will not need her IV soon, in fact the doctor has an order not to replace the IV if it should fall out.

With those feeds increasing, the race is on for Jenn to stay ahead of her in terms of milk produced to milk consumed. So far Jenn is holding her own with 15-30 milliliters every few hours. Not bad for 31 weeks.

Other encouraging things:

• Grace seems to actually be enjoying the photo therapy spa treatments. It is working and should only be a couple more days of that
• Mommy and Daddy are heading home in a couple hours, after out NICU parents get together at 3:15…I think we will show up early.

Share on Facebook

Grace can go to college! The increase in sales was just too significant to ignore. Kleenex® offered to buy the rights to this blog and continue offering it exclusively to their customers. How could we not accept their incredible offer?

The experience for you will remain the same. Grace will grow, you will cry and Kleenex will clean up. In order to ensure that those tears of joy (or fear (or both)) don’t fall into the competitor’s tissues, you will now have to enter the UPC code on the bottom of any container of Kleenex® Brand Tissues to continue to read the newest posts.

UPC Code:
What’s This?

Share on Facebook

IMG_0232.JPG, originally uploaded by Lincoln Topliff.

Borrowing Grace’s clothes already

Share on Facebook