Zorro!!

First off, thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. Layla is still continuing to take her feedings like a champ. She is drinking 12ml at a time and hopefully will be able to get bumped up to 18ml later today.

This morning when we got there we noticed she had a lamp over her. The nurse said this was to get rid of her bilirubin (yellow substance that the body makes as red blood cells are broken down. When it builds up in the body skin can turn yellow which is called jaundice). She has to wear little black Zorro glasses to protect her eyes from the light. She looks so cute. However, she has been a little stressed and her respitory rate has been high. This is because she has to be un-clothed and without a blanket over her, and she doesn't like that at all!!

They now put some other special cushy bedding under her that can form to her body creating a more secure area for her. Hopefully this will help her calm down and have her respitory rate come down. Overall she is doing very well and hopefully this will continue!! Please continue to pray that she keeps taking her feedings and continues to develop.

It was a good day!

All in all today was a great day!!! Layla did great with her 9pm feeding, once again prooving no need for a feeding tube. GO LAYLA!!! She has been sleeping great and is wiggling up a storm in her isolette. It is really funny to see her kick so much.

This evening we got to weigh her again and she was 3lbs 9oz. So she lost another ounce, however, the nurses are not to concerned because that is primarily water weight from when she was in utero. They now expect her to start gaining weight. We will now have to be more careful with how often we take her out of her isolette. The more she is in it the more she grows. By being out of her isolette she burns energy trying to stay warm. The nurses have been great and we are so thankful for the tremendous care they have given her.

Here are a few pics from today:

Feeding

Good news! We are so happy that little Layla is taking her feedings. She did have a feeding tube put in for her noon feeding today in case she got tired and stopped feeding they could finish it in the tube. However, Layla did not like it! The nurse then took it out and Layla finished her bottle on her own. We are so proud of her!

Here are some pics of her feeding time:

Doing Good

Just want to give another update about our sweetie. She is doing really well. She has continued to breath on her own, and is learning to feed from a bottle. She enjoys sucking on her pacifier and also being held by us.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support! We pray she keeps making such great progress.

Layla's First Visits

Layla loved seeing all of her new friends today! Following our some of our pics:

Layla Belle

GUESS WHAT!!!!!

Our little girl decided to arrive two months early. We are now the proud parents of Layla Belle who weighed 3Lbs and 12oz and was 16" long. She is adorable and doing well for being born at 31 weeks.

Yesterday Meredith was not feeling good at all. She had a really bad headache and was extremely uncomfortable. So we both decided to go to bed early and were sleeping by 10pm. Meredith awoke suddenly at 11:30pm due to her water breaking. After speaking with our physician we raced off to Spectrum Health (prenatal care) to find the Emergency Room. It was here we told them we were 31 weeks and in LABOR!

They moved us over to the deliver floor and monitored Mere for a few minutes until the Dr. came. She was super nice and immediatly checked Mere to see how she was doing. Her response was "Wow ... I see the hair, and it is time to move to a delivery room". By the way it is around 1:15am. So we immediatly were taken to a delivery room where the Dr. asked if the NeoNatoligist and team could be present.

By now it is 1:26am and the contractions are going steady. There was no time for an epidural (due to high blood pressure which explains here sever headache ... even if she didnt have high blood pressure there still wouldnt have been enough time) because Layla was on a mission. So Meredith hunkered down and began pushing during the contractions (all the while 10 staff members waited for little Layla).

Then at 1:57am she came into this world. Joe got to cut the cord and watch the neonatal team clean and monitor her. When that was finished she got go to go back to mommy to be held for a bit. Then it was off to the nursery for her, and we had to wait.

All in all, it was a fantastic birth. We are proud parents of a healthy girl who is in good hands. Most likely she will have to be hear for awhile, but we dont know how long for sure.

We will keep updating as more information comes available. For now enjoy these few pictures.

First Family Photo

Layla - 2 minutes old

Layla Belle - 3 hrs old

Farmer Joe

I should actually have called this Gardner Joe, but it just didn't have the same ring to it. During my bedrest Joe has still been keeping busy. Along with keeping up with the house chores he even had time to start a garden this weekend. We had started an indoor garden a bit ago, but those died once we took them outside. Elvis was a big help planting the indoor plants:).
Elvis also helped this weekend plant the regular garden. He then helped by walking in it and trying to pull out Joe's stick markers right after Joe had just watered it. Joe didn't appreciate him walking on the garden and I didn't appreciate his muddy paws:).

All that work tired Elvis right out...(for those that ask if I'm obeying my bedrest, YES, I was laying while taking this picture:) O, and no Joe normally doesn't wear socks with this sandals:).

Since I'm posting planting pics, here are a couple more I had taken. A few weeks ago we planted a tiny pine tree in our yard. Joe's family likes to make fun of our small shed and they now were bugging us that with our new tree you can hardly see our shed because the tree is so big (even though they are the ones that gave us the itty bitty tree) :).