Harper's Story...NICU Week 8...

Another week with our little buddy fighting and growing and doing everything he can to show the doctors he's getting ready to come home. 

Our last major hurdle was getting Harper to a point where he would be awake and taking 80% of his food by bottle or from nursing. Unfortunately that 80% mark seemed to be just out of reach. Too often during the night he didn't seem all that interested in waking up and ended up having his food just put through his tube. I finally decided I'd had enough of that - honestly it didn't make sense how Harper would ever wake up hungry if he never had the opportunity to get hungry - who was to say he wouldn't have woken up at the 3 hour and 15 minute mark? So I put my Harper advocate hat on and talked the doctor into letting him at least do a trial run on que based feeding - happily the doctor obliged. This meant that within 2 to 4 hours if Harper woke up hungry and ready to eat - he could eat. And guess what? He did great and took 100% of his feeds that first 24 hours all on his own. The best part was that after that 24 hours, it meant that tube could finally come out. At long last our sweet baby didn't have anything going into his nose or mouth or taped to his adorably handsome face. Sweet victory! 

Happily this victory coincided with a special baby shower that the March of Dimes put on for all of us here in the NICU. It was such a nice treat with bins of clothes to choose from, mini-diaper cakes to take home, and real cake that was the perfect treat to celebrate Harper's big feeding milestone! I still have a hard time accepting these grand gestures from complete strangers, like the amazing volunteers at the March of Dimes, but then I stop and remind myself that what Harper's been going through and what we've been going through is a really big deal (easier to try and pretend it isn't I suppose) and then I just find myself completely overwhelmed with gratitude for all that's being done to help support us. I look forward to being able to pay it forward soon!

Aside from the excitement of all of that we enjoyed lots of quality Harper time, more NICU selfies, and Harper's very first Halloween. Someone asked me what Harper dressed up as to which I quickly responded - a super hero - no costume needed.