Hey, folks! It's time to reward your patience and give you pictures
of the miracle girl. I finally got comfortable with the scanner and
software so that I could get good images and save them in the correct
format. Hope you all like them.
[note: photos in photo section now]
Zelly weighs 3 lbs and 5.6 oz today. She's taking more and more
feedings from the bottle, without needing her tube. She's still not
getting much from breasfeeding but she has more patience for it each
time we try. She's only 36 weeks gestationally this weekend so she's
still doing things appropriate for her developmental stage. Included
in that development is moderating her body temperature well enough to
be in an open air crib.
Zelly's been practicing her facial expressions. She's very good at
angry, hungry and blissed out. She's got a lot of skill in pursing
her lips and wiggling her eyebrows up and down. And she has a little
smile that makes you think she's got secrets she's not sharing.
When her grandparents (Kathy and David) visited last night, she
was a bit stubborn about opening her eyes. Many photos were
taken anyway. I don't think she was sleeping, she scrunched up
her eyes each time the flash went off, I think she was just showing
her independence. After a nice long visit and much holding and cooing
by the grandparentals, I settled Zelly back into her crib to sleep. I
put her on her side, with her friend Piglet and then she did it. She
opened her eyes. And smiled her secret smile.
I've attatched three pictures. The first is a picture of Zelly at 41
hours. We're having skin-on-skin time (also called kangaroo care).
The other two are from last night. One is of Zelly and the Piglet
that Grandpa gave her shortly after she was born. Piglet has been
keeping watch over her ever since. In the second one it's hard to
tell but she's yawning not howling.