I don’t know if Grace is going to be 10 minutes early for every event, or if she is going to claim that being early all the time in the first few weeks of her life makes up for showing up late for the rest of her life.
At 34 weeks and just shy of 4 weeks out of the belly, little Grace just keeps racking up the “it-would-be-early-for-her-to-be-[blank]” statements, starting with [born], moving most recently to [breastfeeding] and heading quickly towards [going home]!
The tubes are gone! She is now eating every meal, from one kind of nipple or another, on her own schedule! With this new “ad-hoc” feeding schedule, we need to watch her weight to make sure she is eating enough. She breastfeeds a couple times a day now but the only ways to really tell if she is getting enough are wet diapers (which she has) and new ounces. Yesterday’s 70 gram gain (bringing her to almost 4 lbs 11 oz) is wonderful, but it is still too early to know what the feeding change is doing.
What does all this mean?
Basically, it means that little Grace is going to graduate to “Take Home Baby” status before anyone thought, possibly as early as next Wednesday, April 30th!
[pause for cheers and applause]
Needless to say, we are ecstatic at the news and working on the house furiously to make sure that Grace is not embarrassed to be our daughter from the very first minute.
But wait…before you start buying plane, bus, ferry or BART tickets (or just getting in the car) to come visit…remember she still isn’t supposed to be born yet. We are going to have to give her time to get used to life outside of the sterile NICU environment. That means we have to maintain extremely limited visitation for now. We are not building a plastic bubble for her just yet, but we are told that we have to keep the “worst of the germs” away for at least a couple weeks. I am still not exactly sure what the “worst of the germs” means, but when I use that phrase with people that have kids, they nod knowingly and scare me just a little.
