STELLA IS HOME!

After 20 days in the NICU, Stella is finally home! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!!! She began eating more yesterday later in the afternoon and by the end of the 24 hr period had eaten 382 ml. 72 more than she had eaten the day before and the most she'd eaten in one 24 hour period to date. The evening before she weighed just 4 grams short of 5 pounds.

Stella tends to swallow a lot of air while eating and is very hard to burp. You can tell when she needs to burp. She squinches up her face, holds her breath and turns red. Then she will either do crunches or arch her back or both in sucession. Anything to try and get that air bubble out. When the burp does come, it isn't very lady like! The 3rd grade boys will be quite impressed with her prowess if she can still burp like that then. No matter how you burp her, on your shoulder, on her stomach, half sitting up, tummy rubs, back rubs, it just takes a long time to get the air out. Daddy had a great idea and brought some of the Dr. Brown's bottles in yesterday afternoon. We thought that the new bottles (thank you mom and Ivonne for so thoughtfully providing them) might help to reduce the air she swallows. It didn't make it go away, but definitely helped. Daddy gets kudos for a great idea!

At home, we have her in her crib in her half decorated room. I hope to finish it off sometime over the next few weeks. Tim is taking the night shift to help her get on a good schedule so we decided that our room should be baby free. Hopefully he won't need to stay on midnights for more than a few days. I am again very thankful that he isn't working full time and has a flexible schedule. It will make the transition to home go much more smoothly.

Will post picture when I get them off the camera!