Go big girl, what you gonna do?!

Lily is a little over a month old now, a month and 8 days old to be exact. Last night she was moved out of the NIC-U and into a room on the pediatric floor with her friends Briealle, Trinity and her sister Serinity. This is the "big girl room", it is our last stop before we finally head home.

Friday we attempted bottle feeding for the first time, Lily was just not ready. We we're told by the Doctor's that it would probably be around 36 weeks before she wanted to try, simply because of her size, and how small her stomach was. Saturday morning Lily proved that we are doing things on her schedule, not our schedule, not the Doctors schedule, just Lily's; Lily took her first full bottle early Saturday morning around 3a.m.! Since then Lily has continued to take about every other bottle, sometimes back to back bottles - depending on how tired she is at the time. Once she drinks every bottle for 48 hours we can get rid of her feeding tube & see her pretty little face without anything else on it. No tape, no cords, no tubes.

She is also holding her own body temperature much better. At one point we we're almost out of the box in a "real crib" & then Lily decided she just wasn't ready. Technically she is holding her own temperature now, but they make them work for it. They don't put them in air conditioning obviously but they pull them down below room temperature to see if they can keep it up. Currently we are one degree below room temperature and we have one more to go before we say so long to "The Box" for good and move into a open air crib.

She has continued to breathe on her own consistantly for weeks now. At one point she would stop breathing approximately 13 times a night. Now it seems that she has gotten the hang of this whole breathing thing & hasn't stopped at all since. Until yesterday she was on caffine daily, now this is the real test, will she stop breathing without her caffine helping her out some? She hasn't had any "bradys" or "apnea" since they discontinued it & we have faith that we won't see any at all again.

Things are looking good at getting home before Christmas! I am very ready to have her home & Jared is way past ready for his little girl to get home and snuggle her up! To get our little girl home she has to take her minimum amount of food from a bottle at each feeding, she has to hold her body temperature & she has to go 7 straight days without stopping her breathing at all. As you can see, we are so close to "breaking out of this joint." Just a few more weeks! Stay strong Lily, we are so ready to have you home with us.