Day 2: At home with Catie

I figure that Catie's discharge from the hospital was a logical end of our CaringBridge site. Those sites are really only for short term use and the 51 photo limit was driving me crazy. I never intended to continue posting from home, but with so many of our friends and family far away, I decided to start this. Besides, I've gotten pretty good at typing one handed and have LOTS of sitting around time while nursing (have I mentioned how much this kid likes to eat?!). It's weird I guess, but I never considered CaringBridge a blog- it was just a means of getting status reports out to everyone who cares about us when we didn't have the time to call or email. Somehow it took on a life of its own, and here we are...

For those of you who have not been keeping up with CaringBridge, Catriona was born at 28 weeks 6 days on May 6th. She was discharged on Wednesday after spending 70 days in the IU Hospital Special Care Nursery. She weighed 6 lbs 7 oz when she was discharged, well up from the her low weight of 2 lbs 8 oz. As with so many newborns, and preemies in particular, she suffers from gastroesophageal reflux. Spitting up alone isn't a problem- what baby doesn't urp on a regular basis??? However, Catie tends to stop breathing and drop her heartrate when she is doing so. Therefore, she came home with an apnea monitor so we will know when she has one of these bradycardic events and can get her through it without having to rush a blue baby to the emergency room. So far, so good on that front- no bradys and no blue baby (yet).

Things are still plenty exciting though. We are all getting adjusted to life away from the NICU. For Andy & I, this means living on limited sleep, having to pass the baby back and forth during meals, and learning to interpret Catie's newer cries without having a huge medical team there supporting us. Catie, on the other hand, is having to get used to a new environment sans the constant ring of alarms and crying babies and with mom & dad as her only caretakers. She seems to be handling the changes well though. I think babies must be remarkably resilient little creatures.

Stay tuned and we'll keep you posted on Catie's progress and our parental trials as Miss C grows!