Day 8 and 9

DAY 8 - And we had our first (of many) cuddles.  Skin on skin contact is very important and so they hospital recommends that when the babies are brought out of their "homes", the sit with you for at least an hour.  So above is the first picture of mommy and baby.  It was nerve racking, because she's so tiny, but it will get better and I'll feel more comfortable each day.

Eyes are not yet open.  The doctor says there is not set time as to when they will open.  All of a sudden they are.  Alice no longer has the wires going into her tummy.  Her PICK (or IV tube) is in her right hand.  As you can see, she is still intubated (that's the tube you see going into her mouth).  They'll keep her on this for a while (don't know how like "awhile" is).  She is back to getting only 1cc of food every 4 hours.
You can see how small her hand is in relation to Scott's finger.  Very, very tiny.  We did learn today that there's a chance she'll need at least one blood transfusion.  Reason for this is she only has about 73cc's of blood in her little body.  And with a premie, the bone marrow does not yet know it's supposed to replenish the blood when it leaves the body.  The hospital needs to withdraw blood from her for testing - at most they'll probably take 3cc's of blood from her.  If she was a lot sicker, then more blood tests would have to be done, which would mean the possibility of more than one transfusion.  The blood for the transfusions are from donated blood (that has been tested up the ying yang) so the chance of her getting HIV or Hep C is very, very, very low.

DAY 9 - Big Brother Max meets his sister Alice (no photos)

Max met Alice this morning and was very happy to see her.  He realizes that she is very, very, very small and must stay with the doctors so she can grow big before coming home.  We didn't know how he'd react, but he was fine.  Kids don't see what we see (the tubes and wires and all the machines) and so he had no concerns at all.

I was able to have another cuddle (much more relaxed this time) while Scott and Max wandered the hospital and had hot chocolate's at Starbucks.

Big thing - her eyes are open (very weird that we had just asked about it yesterday).  They are also going to increase her food take to 2cc's every 2 hours and increase the amount by 1cc every 24 hours and see how that goes.  It's good news for now, as she is digesting the breast milk.  Alice also gained 6 grams overnight, so her weight is now around 809 grams.  The doctor has ordered an x-ray to see how her lungs are doing as her oxygen and CO2 levels are a bit high - but nothing to be worried about.