2lbs 13oz!

Finally! Ava has gotten over her little speed bump of 2lbs 12oz. Three times she hit 2lbs 12oz only to lose weight and then gain it back, but she just could NOT seem to get over that hump. Today she is 2lbs 13oz, so I hope it is just UP from here. She is so close to 3lbs. It took Travis 12 weeks to hit 3lbs, so hopefully she will do it a little quicker!

Ava is 4 weeks old today (she will be a month on Friday). Whenever I think about how long we have been here, I wonder how much longer it will be. That is a question I hear a lot. Do they know when she might come home? Well, it's not a question I have asked, because I learned better with Travis. The doctors don't know, the nurses don't know and I don't know. Only God knows...and maybe Ava ;). I had hoped she would come home around 35 or 36 weeks, but that was when she was doing SO well. Now I am shooting for her due date, which is about 2 more months. But the reality is that I have no control over that. I just want her home as soon as she is ready, and I hope that is sooner rather than later. The requirements for Ava to come home are that she needs to eat (by mouth), breathe, and grow. So far, she is taking her time on all three of these. She is breathing, but stops when she doesn't feel like it anymore, she seems to be growing now, but back and forth doesn't work, and she is starting to learn to breastfeed, but so far not much progress has been made there, but that is ok because she won't ACTUALLY start nursing/bottle feeding until 32 gestational weeks. Right now she is 30.5 weeks. So when you look at it that way, we have a ways to go still. And it's impossible to know how quickly she will do these things. Girls tend to do better than boys so here's to hoping that she proves that right! I want nothing more than to have my babies at home together, where we can be a real family.