39 Weeks (and one day)

I have quite a few things on my mind so this might be a little random...

1) We got the car back from the shop. Sort of. They said there was a part on the transmission that was warped so they replaced it, put the car back together, and took it out for a test drive. It was still making the same noise. They wanted to keep the car and take the transmission apart again to figure out what was wrong. I said no thankyou, we need the car. The guy was really nice and I don't think he was trying to pull anything over on us. He said the car was safe to drive but that he didn't want to give it back to us not completely fixed. I told him our situation and that we just couldn't be without a car anymore (it had been there a week). So, he wants Danny to bring the car back in the next time he is down so that they can finish fixing it. Danny and I were talking about which car he was going to drive down today and I asked him which he would rather have...his tire blow up or his transmission to fall out on the freeway. Such is our life these days! Sometimes all we can do is laugh because if we didn't we would fall apart and walk down the sidewalk crying (again)

2) Thankyou for your comments and emails about book suggestions. I am looking forward to picking some to read.

 {Mom shoved me in my dino jammies yesterday but they were too small! Must be all the cake pops I've been eating...}

3) The contest to guess Cohen's "going home" weight is still going! There really is no prize, but it's fun

4) A Cohen update: He had a good blood gas this morning but the Drs are going to leave him on the 3L high flow through the weekend just to really let him rest and concentrate on growing his lungs.

Anyway, his respiratory rate has been lower than it was and he seems to be breathing a little easier. He has been sleeping quite a bit and having a lot of "quiet" days which we hope means he is using his energy for growing! The nutritionist gave us a graph of his growth and he finally has a nice upward trend. He is finally on the chart! I'm not exactly sure how to read it, she explained it to me, but I forget what it means. I think it means he has finally crossed over the 10th percentile of babies born at his current gestation (39 weeks). I could be off on that, but I think that's what she told me. Some things tend to go in one ear and fall out the other side...

He had another ROP (eye) check yesterday and his eyes are still the same. They haven't gotten worse but they haven't really improved either. He gets another check in 2 weeks and hopefully his eyes will be improving. He also is due for another echo to look at his heart next week. We are hoping that the right side of his heart isn't getting any larger because of the work of pushing blood to his stiff lungs. Maybe it will even be improving and getting smaller.

Cohen's Drs and nurses have said that he probably won't be home for another few weeks to a month. We are planning on him coming home on oxygen and possibly a feeding tube. The way it seems to be looking right now is that if we want him home sooner then he will come home on a feeding tube. He may be able to breastfeed some, but because of his lungs and how much energy it takes for him to nurse or take a bottle, it might be easier to not push him on the feeding and just continue to do some tube feeding. Probably it would be us letting him either nurse or bottle feed as much as he could and then giving him the rest in his tube. But, he still has a little while so who knows what can happen between now and then! We just can't wait to get him home!

5) I think that God really speaks to me through music. I think I first heard this song when I was in college and it makes me cry every time. Especially now that I know Carter is with Jesus...the "fly to Jesus" part makes be bawl because I imagine my little baby flying to be with Jesus.

6)This last week has been hard for me and I think part of it is that I am nearing my due date. 3+ months after our boys were born my due date is finally coming. It's bittersweet. I am so, so thankful for my little miracle baby. Even on the worst of days, when I hold Cohen, it seems like I can keep going. I can take one more step. My due date is a little bitter because it's the day that I should have been welcoming both of my boys into this world. We should have been waiting with anticipation instead of fear. This is not at all how I imagined it would have gone. But, it did. I can't change it. I am trying to rest in the knowledge that this is all still in God's control. It is incredibly amazing to me that God truly does knit babies together in their mothers' wombs. I think that this is just one of the things that really confirms to me that God is real. That he carefully creates each baby, over time, and that even when they are born so early, they are still perfect little beings.