Closing A Chapter

Five days after Riley's homecoming, I am finally starting to feel all the stress and sadness of the past weeks melting away and now we can close this chapter of our lives (Yeah!). 

The chapter opened of course with my water breaking early at 32 weeks and me being in the hospital for 11 days.  Then Riley was born at 34 weeks and our life at the NICU began.

Her first few days of life she was breathing with a c-pap machine, hooked up to IVs for fluids and on all kinds of monitors.  She was so uncomfortable and its still hard to see these pictures.

Here she is in her isolette on her little pad they snuggled her into.  It's supposed to mimic how she would be snuggled in the womb.

A week after she was born, she was breathing well enough to be moved off of c-pap on to a nasal canula, but still hooked up to everything else. 

And then came the jaundice and the blue light.  She had to be enclosed in an isolette so we couldn't hold her. They had anticipated her being under the light for 3-4 days.  Luckily she was better in only 1 day!

Here she is hooked up to all her IVs and feeding tubes! It's pretty tricky trying to change a diaper with so many cords in the way! 

Then one day we came in to find her off of all breathing help and her feeding tube moved to her nose, making it easier for her to learn to feed. Her IV came out when this happened too!  

Finally she was eating well enough to be off of all assistance.  Her only cords were her heart and oxygen saturation monitors! 

She passed her car seat study, a 90 minute monitoring session she has to have before she can be discharged.

  

 And then it was just a matter of growing and maturing to be ready to come home. 

And now here we are, at home doing great and loving being all together all the time!