Groundhog Day

After 33 days straight at the hospital, the days are starting to blur together like crazy. At least for me being back at work helps change things up a bit but for Beth this is even worse. Her days consist of the following: getting up in the middle of the night to pump then going back to sleep, waking up early to pump, getting ready for the day, pump some more, go to the hospital, hang out in a tiny, dark 6x6 room all day while pumping several times, then go home and pump, eat, pump one last time, and then go to sleep and start the vicious cycle all over again.

It's kind of like that movie Groundhog's Day, that is without all the snow and in a much better town. I've even found the annoying guy that says "watch your step, it's a doozie" who in my version is the security guard on the 1st floor of the hospital that I try to sneak by every day. This week in particular, now that we're just waiting on little Harper to figure out how to eat on her own the days have become so monotonous but then came the weekend and I think we've turned the corner. You know the point when Bill Murray decides he's going to make the best of it and learns to play the piano and speak Chinese. Yeah, that's where we're at although instead of learning the piano I have learned how to change a poopy diaper without getting peed all over.

Harper has made fantastic progress this week. She's now up to a smidge over 5 pounds and is finally starting to fill out a bit. We're still waiting on two things to develop before we can take her home; the first being that she has no "events" like the Brady's I've described in past postings and the second is for her to learn how to eat on her own. Well, she hasn't had an event in 4 days so, fingers crossed, those might be behind us. She's also made tremendous progress on the eating front. They've been telling us that when she finally gets it that she'll just take off on this front and that's exactly what's happened. Two days ago she took 53% of her feedings through the bottle and yesterday she took 84%. As soon as she has 24 consecutive hours of 100% feedings through the bottle they will take the feeding tube out of her nose and then from there as long as she can eat two days straight on her own then she can come home, barring any further "events".

Best case scenario we'll be welcoming our little bundle of joy to our home next weekend and Beth is aggressively trying to find a little preemie Halloween outfit for her to wear. After researching all over the web she found a good tip to purchase one of the little outfits they use for the teddy bears at Build a Bear. She's got her eye on a little Hawaiian outfit with a coconut shell bra. I was hoping for an OU Cheerleaders outfit but after this weekend that will be used as her diaper.

Beth and I are doing well, much better now that Harper is starting to pick up on the whole eating thing but I'll confess that last week was the toughest. I was literally dreaming how I could kidnap my daughter from the NICU. I had it all planned out. Since my wife likes to carry purses 3 times the size of the normal persons I was going to pad the bottom with blankets, slide Harper right in, and then bolt for the door. That all said, I'm hopeful that she'll get to come home by next weekend without Dad having to execute this poorly concocted scheme.

On a lighter note, one of the best things of the past week is all the support we've been getting from friends and family. All the gifts of little preemie outfits have helped ensure Harper has an endless supply of pink clothes to cycle through. Also, a group of friends have banded together to provide us meals in the evenings. This has been so great as we typically don't get home until late and have no energy to cook (we haven't even been to the store for a month). We are just so thankful for the outpouring of support as it truly has meant the world to us both.

So.... hopefully my next post will be to inform everyone of the news that Harper has sprung from the hospital and joined her family at home. Thanks for your continued prayers for Harper's development, for her ability to fully learn to eat on her own, and for her to have no more of those stinkin Brady's.