I am sure many of you have been anticipating our first blog from home. Well, here it is. My child is wonderful, sweet, and incredibly fussy. The nurses TRIED to warn us about her little (big) personality, but Erik and I never realized how strong willed she really was, but before I get to that I would like to tell you about our last 2 days before Brady came home.

As I told you in a previous blog I was told Brady was most likely going to come home on Saturday. Excited does not even describe to you the feelings Erik and I had. Of course we didn’t want to get our hopes up too much. It wouldn’t be a done deal till Saturday morning when the Doctor told us she was discharged. After we realized they had given us a two day notice, I kinda went into shock and soon the frustration set in. We had SO much to do and so little time to do it in. Little did we know we had less time than we thought.

That night we got to go to the hospital to see our daughter. It was a special visit knowing that it would be one of the last at Brady’s first home. Her nurse was going over the usual. Erik and I were sitting there with Brady and all of a sudden the words “rooming in” catch our attention. We were like “huh?”. What was this rooming in she was talking about. Well, Brady had to go home on a heart monitor (which I love, and all babies should have one. Makes is very easy to sleep… for mom and dad) so we had to stay the night before to make sure nothing went wrong and we could handle her. At this point I have to say we kinda freak out just a little. Erik and I are both very last minute people and instead of starting right away getting the house ready for Brady, we went to dinner with my mom and dad :) . I love Japanese. SO, our house was a mess and we had no time to clean it up. Needless to say, that visit with Brady was a little shorter than others in the past and we went home. Thankfully my mom, who is absolutely wonderful, offered to clean the apartment for us. My dad helped and it was great to come home to a clean house, but back to the hospital.

Erik and I went up to the hospital about 3:45 because we had to be trained on how to give Brady her meds and work her apnea/heart monitor and fix her formula which is a concoction of powdered and liquid formula. We also had to take CPR for infants, b/c sometimes preemies do have issues, but if you ask me (and I know you didn’t :P ) they should require it of all parents before they leave the hospital. 

Once, we were all CPR trained and the pharmacist showed us how to measure Brady’s meds we were off to our own room. Our first night with our baby was completely restless and not much of that had to do with Brady. I slept more than Erik considering I had the bed and he had a chair that couldn’t pull out because of Brady’s crib. Brady slept through the night. We thought we had a winner on our hands and that life would be easy. Wrong, but I’ll get to that later. We had a hard time waking her up to take her bottles and she slept like a little log, never waking up unless we forced her to wake up. It was easy to give her the medication she needed and we thought we were going to be good at this. So, Brady checked out great. She did everything she needed to do which included gaining a little bit of weight and not freaking out the night we roomed in. So, Saturday morning we were discharged. It was not the most beautiful of days, but it never is when Erik and I have something important going on. If you are new friends of ours through this blog you don’t know that our wedding day ended a 3 month drought. It was rainy and chilly, but our lived were full of sunshine. Brady slept the whole way home, and there another chapter in our lives began.

I love my child. That is the first thing I would like to say before I go into how sleep deprived, tired, and at times frustrated because of Brady. I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that in any way do I regret having my child home. The first day was ok. Mom and Dad brought us dinner and sat with us for a little while and Brady slept and the night wasn’t too bad. We just had to figure out a way for her to sleep so she wasn’t laying down flat on her back. Erik assembled her swing and that is what she is sleeping in these days. Sunday was horrible. All of a sudden Brady wouldn’t eat more than 10 cc’s at a time and she is supposed to get 45. I couldn’t believe it. After making this huge step forward at the hospital with bottle feeding I thought she was taking a huge step back. To keep my frustration from getting the best of me Erik took over feeding Brady. She had a pretty bad day that day and ended up below her minimum intake she needs for the day. Thankfully she had a doctor’s appointment the next day so we weren’t too worried. She is now doing much better and getting more than needs.  So, frustration # 1 was her lack of eating.

Frustration # 2 she likes to be held ALL the time.  The nurses at the hospital spoiled my child (and that’s is just fine with me :P ). It shows they cared about my baby and I love them for loving her. Unfortunately she loves to be held and if she is awake wants to be in your arms and sometimes when she’s asleep she wants to be in your arms. At time Erik and I think she is conked out and go to lay her down and she wakes up and starts fussing. We haven’t got the “let them fuss” concept down yet.

Frustration #3 is she starts to fuss about and hour before she needs to eat. This would be ok if she had a good amount of time between feeding, but she gets fed every three hours. This means we have to get up up about 15 minutes before we feed her to warm up her formula, change her diaper. If it’s time for meds we need to get up 30 minutes prior to feeding her to give her those meds. So, we have to get up early to feed her, it takes about 20 minutes to feed her, and then we have to get her back to sleep. This morning I was up from 12:45 till after 2:30. Needless to say I need my sleep in between her feedings. I say “I” need my sleep because Erik sleeps through her little fussy times. 

So, obviously having a 3 month old preemie at home for the first time is just like having a newborn at home, except Brady is on a bit of s schedule.

I love my child. God has done so many wonderful things in our lives and Brady is so special to us and right now our time at home is so sweet because it has been along journy