Great day! Tess is on low-flow air – 1 liter! Awesome. Just…awesome. This dainty little tube is all you see; no
more humidifier and tube full of droplets that water board her. I am so impressed! She was breathing well and grunting nonstop; her digestion is not enamored of the protein shake part of her diet. After her (now daily) tummy massage, she looked perfectly content though. She gazed at me and the modern art on the back of my phone with equal adoration, so it’s time for high contrast photos! We’re going to use cards all of you have sent. 🙂

On our way into 9pm cares, we ran into our Ron McDonald cohorts leaving with their baby! He passed all the tests and was headed back to Wyoming. We knew it was coming, but it was still startling to see a NICU family leave. The moms both got teary, and with a hug they were gone – off to their normal life in another state with people they know and a whole new routine around baby Hudson. It got me excited and nervous, because at some point that will be us! I feel like we’ll miss so many people when we finally leave. We’ll miss the incredible care and constantly knowing she’s safe, but we’re also making friends, and leaving them will be hard.

Tonight was a huge milestone: her first bath!!!! Apparently, I got the order all wrong. Dave and I were in awe: she slept through 98% of it! Still, she didn’t cry once, and seemed pretty happy at the end when she did crack an eye open. Afterward, we snuggled her up with Dave for kangaroo, and she was unbelievably cute – very alert, and looking around like someone could explain what just happened! She and Dave fell asleep for half an hour or so, and not a single peep was heard from that corner of the room! So cute and domestic. Like I have said before, there’s something special about evening cares. We rounded the evening out with Dave picking me up at the door so I could skip the rain. A gentleman, a sweet babe, and me. Life’s pretty amazing!