A Journey to Forever: Kate is 4 months old and officially off Oxygen

Kate is 4 months old- 7.5 lbs and 19"- and officially off oxygen.

A little bit of the Wilde side at my house

A good friend of mine gave Kate this darling outfit-love the wild print.

These two babies take most of our time. Usually it's Kennadi in Josh's arms and Kate in mine. Can't complain though, because there isn't anything better than holding a baby.

Last week we did the Oximeter Test on Kate. She wore an Oximeter on her foot for 12 hrs. over night while we took her oxygen off. We had to watch it constantly to make sure she didn't drop too low in case we needed to put the oxygen back on (I'll admit I did dose off a bit). She was supposed to stay between 84-100 on her saturation level and she stayed consistent at 90 or higher. She did great and we were able to take her oxygen off for good over the weekend! It's so nice to not have the extra tubing hooked up to her, the tanks to haul around the house with her, and her face is now free from tubes and stickies- she almost looks naked without it on- like she's missing her glasses. It will be nice to have all the oxygen tanks and equipment taken out of our room next week!

We also switched her formula over to a new kind called Neosure. She hates it and refuses to eat it. We will have to use my frozen milk supply (which isn't much) and introduce very small amounts of the Neosure in it for the next couple weeks until she is accustomed to it. Just over a week ago Kate started having a hard time eating and it's continued to get worse. She drinks a little and then screams like it hurts to drink, then she drinks a little more and chokes on it. When she chokes on it she takes 10-20 seconds to recover and start breathing again. She tries drinking a bit more, but continues to have these problems. So she gives up and goes to sleep without eating as much as she should. Dr. Grandpa checked her to see if she was sick, but she looks good and healthy. We bought some banana baby food yesterday and started putting it in her formula again to thicken it and she is eating better now. It just baffles me why she has done so well without bananas for several weeks and now she is struggling again.

In the NICU I became close with some of the other mothers in there. One of them was Camille, Rosie's mom. She was so good to us! During the first couple weeks we were there she crocheted Kate a beautiful blanket and gave us quite a few preemie clothes for Kate to wear. We checked on each other often and shared stories and triumphs with our babies. She touched my heart that she was so giving and had reached out to us during a time when she was going through such a hard trial herself. She opened my eyes that it was healing to serve and reach out to others. I found that talking to other parents lifted and strengthened me. When Kam was in the NICU I kept to myself and felt like I was in my own little closed world. It felt like such a dark, heavy, and lonely experience in comparison to Kates. I'm still so grateful for all the parents that I met and will forever hold them and their babies near and dear to my heart!