heather, marc, wren & z mroz

heather’s nicknames…
poptart
popples
poppy
honey girl
baby girl
sweetie pie
sweet stuff
sweeters
hungry hungry hippo
good eater girl

marc’s nicknames…
kicky-pants-mcgee
wren-er
my little wren

I’m not doing so good in the nickname department, heather always comes up with better sayings and nicknames than I do. Her sayings and nicknames actually stick.

Yeah I can’t believe it, wren is 1 month old already. She is growing big. The wren bird onesie that heather made for her before she was born is just about too small, in a few more weeks it won’t be able to snap since she is getting so long. Wren is doing really good. She seems to almost always sleep 5-7 hours in a row at night. It is just getting her to fall asleep that is the problem. We have been doing the swaddle a lot, it helps her not wake herself up in the middle of the night or the middle of a nap, the kid-potomus swaddle blanket, and the mircle swaddle blanket we got as gifts are really coming in handy. Thanks Mom! Thanks Mickey! We tried to do a 1 month old photo shoot today, but wren wasn’t too happy with that. Maybe she is getting too old for photos already?

yes. that is a flashlight we are shining on her to take the picture. we are living on the edge.

So it was my first father’s day this year. Heather took pictures of Wren and me together. It was technically the day after father’s day but you get the idea. Wren was 20 days old.

Wren had her first real bath this week. By real I mean she actually got to go in some water, not just being washed with a washcloth. Heather and Wren had fun in the tub getting all clean. Wren seemed to not mind it too much, I’m not sure she knew what was going on though. The only part we need to do better at next time is to put her dry clothes on in the bathroom where it is warm. I took her into the other room to put her clothes on and she got cold and shivery, so we had to go back in the bathroom since it was warmmer and wrap her in a towel.

This is right in the begining of her bath…

Thursday my parents, my grandma, and friend Lina came to visit us and Wren. It was really nice seeing everyone. Wren got to see everyone and hang out with her grandma, g-pa (as my dad wants to be called), great grandma, and Lina too! My mom seriously held wren for hours on end without moving, I think my mom likes wren, but that is just a guess!

My grandma, wren’s great grandma, had fun seeing wren for the first time…

I can’t believe this is the first thing that I’m writing since Wren’s been born! I’ve been so paranoid the past week that she hasn’t been eating enough – she’s been nursing great, but is usually done in about 10 minutes. We just had a doctor’s appointment and she now weighs 8 pounds! The doctor said that she is gaining great and not to worry about the feedings – she is probably just a very efficient nurser. They want to see babies gain about 1/2 – 1 ounce a day and she gained 6 ounces in a week so she is doing great! She also said that we don’t have to wake her anymore to eat! Wren has been sleeping for long stretches at night and we keep waking her at about 4 or 5 hours so it will be interesting to see how long she will go before she wakes up on her own. AND her cord came off today! It was hanging on by this little piece (marc was dying to pull it off) and we asked the doctor and the little piece was actually a stitch that was left over from her IV – so she snipped it and now Wren has a belly button! It still has some dried up blood stuff on it, but we can give her a tub bath now! I think I will tonight – maybe marc can take some pictures – she is so cute with soapy hair (and I’m pretty sure she likes it). Anyway, I feel like a huge weight is lifted off my shoulders and I’m so glad that she is doing well and gaining what she should. (oh… the doctor said that she has a blocked tear duct, but we got info on massaging it and she didn’t seem concerned)

Our first week home with wren has been a good one. At some points during the day and night she sleeps for a good 4-5 hours at a time, other points during the night she seems to not want to go to bed and is half hungry, half sleepy, half fussy, half kicky-legs-mcgee. Heather and I are fairly tired most of the day but we do get a good solid several hours of sleep in a row each night which is nice.

We had wren’s first doctors appointment, and everything looks fine. We are slightly worried about wren’s feedings, she lost a little bit of weight since being discharged from the NICU. We aren’t quite sure if she is eating enough, she seems to be very fussy during nursing and doesn’t eat for very long sometimes. I guess we will see what her weight is like next week at the doctor again.

We’ve had several visits from friends this week, john & stace, katie, genia & sam, and mike & tracy even helped us pick up wren’s glyder, rocking, swival chair thing since it was too big to fit in our car (even though we tried).

Ok funny story (wasn’t so funny at the time)… This week I was changing wren’s diaper because it was smelly. I did all the things the nurse showed me in the NICU, I had several wipes out and ready to go, I put a clean diaper under her before opening the dirty one, I even had a wipe sticking out of the package ready for a quick draw in case I went through the 3 other wipes already out. So I started changing her diaper, everything was going fine, I lifted her legs to wipe her booty, and she started to poop again. It got all over the clean diaper I had under her, no big deal just wasted a clean diaper. So I waited a few minutes for her to finish, got another clean diaper out and more wipes and started the process again. This time as I lifted her legs she had a gusher of poop! It shot out all over the side of her bed and on the mattres too, it got on her clothes, it got everwhere! She got me not once with an extra poop, but twice within a few minutes. I wish she could tell me she still has poops in there! Untill then I really need to learn when wren is done pooping and when she isn’t.

On a lighter note, here are some more pictures of wren at 8 days old:

We can’t really decide if Wren looks more like me or more like Heather. What do you think?

In case you can’t tell Marc is on the left, Heather is on the right, and Wren is in the middle.

Wren had her first photo shoot today. It was short, and Dad needs practice, but Wren sure does look cute! She is quite the expressionist with her little face.

Our first night at home with Wren wasn’t as easy as it looked when we were visiting her in the NICU every 3 hours. In the hospital we would change her, feed her, and then she would go to sleep in her crib, simple and easy. However our first night at home wasn’t as easy. I think we kept her awake too long coming home from the hospital, maybe she was over stimulated, or maybe she was just so used to eating soo much from the bottle that with nursing alone she wasn’t full enough. We ended up feeding her what seemed like every hour or so for part of the night, it seemed like she was always hungry, but eventually towards the morning she did sleep about 4 hours in a row before waking up so we got some sleep then.

I got to change her diaper a few times at the hospital and a few more times at home already. The silly girl seems to always poop right after I change her, she doesn’t know how to save money and the environment by conserving diapers yet. Okay maybe I just need to learn to wait a little longer before changing her.

Here are a few more photos of Wren from yesterday getting her ready to leave the hospital:

We talked with the doctor this morning, and she said that Wren could go home today!!!!! We were so excited, we couldn’t stop smiling. We took her home after her 12:30pm feeding, and we are actually sitting in our house right now with our little Wren. We gave Wren a quick tour of her house and I couldn’t quite tell, by the look on her face, but I think she likes it.

Thank you all for your encouragement, love, and prayers. We are so thankful that Wren is doing well and only had to stay a few short days in the NICU.

So we were fairly confident that Wren was going to be able to come home with us today. But this morning at rounds with the doctors in the NICU, the doctor told us that she didn’t feel comfortable letting Wren go home today, and wanted to give it another day. There were 3 things she was worried about.
1. Wren failed her car seat test. They basically put her in her car seat hook her up to the monitors and see if she is doing okay strapped in and sitting up, that her heart is working okay and her lungs are working fine. The test is for an hour. Wren started having problems breathing at 57 minutes. She was only 3 minutes short of passing. The nurse said she tried to readjust things in the car seat and gave her a couple extra chances to pass but she wasn’t breathing great.
2. Wren’s feedings weren’t going as good as they wanted. I think they wanted her to take more than she was eating.
3. Wren was having a hard time maintaining her temp. They kept having to bundle her up in more clothes, turn on a heat lamp, and bump up the temp in the room to make sure her temp wasn’t too low.

So far today seemed better for Wren. It seemed like her temp didn’t dip too low each time we took it, and she is eating a ton more today than before. Her goal for the day was 300 mL, and I think she did 368 mL so went over what they expected. The car seat test is still to be seen, I just came back from feeding her, and the nurse was going to do the car seat test sometime tonight. Hopefully she passes.

We can’t get our hopes up that she will go home tomorrow, but it seems like things are looking good. They have very high expectations for Wren in the NICU, I hope she can meet those soon, because she totally seems like she is fine now and doing great.

Heather’s Mom and Sister came to visit at the hospital today, which was great. They got to see Wren, hold her, hug her, and Grandma Olund even got to change a nasty nasty dirty diaper for Wren. It was great to see family, and Wren got to meet her Grandma and one of her Aunts. Aunt Sandy brought Wren some very nice gifts and is already starting to spoil her and she is only a few days old.

Photos from Grandma Olund and Aunt Sandy’s visit: