I was discharged this yesterday afternoon! I am doing much better in my physical recovery minus some very bad foot swelling they’re keeping an eye on. Hormones and emotions have been all over but I think that can be expected with any delivery right? Lots of tears but also so much joy and wonder every time we think and know we now have our daughter here. She is the absolute best 😭🩷 I am pumping every 3 hours and typically when we are with her in the NICU I pump and Jeremy attempts the bottle feeds with donor milk. We incorporate my milk with some of her oral care and they just started adding some of my milk to her feeding too I think. Also, Hello engorgement 🫨🙃!!

We went home last night after discharge for about 2 hours, unloaded, and I pumped, got a super quick shower and we got back to the hospital to spend a few hours with her til around midnight. I lost it when we left— but she is in such good care. The camera system that they have on her which we are supposed to be able to view at any time from our phones isn’t currently working. 😢 got a message in the middle of the night from her nurse!

Now for an update on Maelyn, she is doing fairly well! She is the absolute most chill baby— I have only seen her awake like twice since she’s been born. She is always sleeping. She is off all oxygen, CPAPs, and is breathing room air well. She got her IV out Tuesday morning because her sugars have been well which was a big step. She still has her little feeding tube in and right now they are working to get her to a certain percentage of her feeds taken by bottle before they can remove the feeding tube. She is also a bit jaundice right now and may need the photo therapy lights today. They are monitoring her levels and saying that could be too why she is extra tired and just from everything. They also ran new labs on her kidney today so we are waiting to hear about those. She is so hard to wake up — there was three of us, me and two lactation consultants trying to stimulate her and wake her up while trying to get her to feed on me and even with bottle. She just loves to sleep. When she meets 70-80% (I think) of her feedings by bottle then they can remove the feeding tube. Then the next step would be 2-3 possible days of seeing how she does without the tube, and monitoring her weight with the bottle feedings. As of yesterday morning she was only reaching like 60% of her feeds with bottle (we need to get up to that 70-80%), but then she really didn’t take a bottle for us at all the last 2 feedings last night and Jeremy had to feed them to her through the tube. It was discouraging but she has so much going on in her little body and is just so exhausted it seems. We are headed to spend a majority of the day with her today. They anticipated discharge (maybe) this weekend at the earliest but it just seems to change every day so we aren’t holding our breath for any specific day just taking it one day at a time.

Jeremy has been the most incredible support partner and daddy to Maelyn. I completely melt every time those two are together and it is my new favorite thing in the entire world. Whole newfound love for your spouse like I’m sure you all have experienced too 🥹🩷

Counting our blessings because there are sooo many sick babies when we walk through those doors and we know Maelyns situation isn’t to the extent of a lot of the sweet babies that have to stay for weeks and weeks, even months 😭

Thank you all so much for checking in and being such an amazing support despite me being able to readily reply. ❤️ you all have no idea how much it means to know we have so many prayer warriors and a village of people that are loving on us and her and can’t wait to meet Maelyn. Her and us are the luckiest to have you all. ‘Thank you’ will never be enough. 💝

If you made it this far….. I will try and add updates to this note as we have them and you can go back in and see anything I’ve added as a way to keep everyone in the loop on her progress. 

All my love to you all, Kate