D-Day

So, here we are... the beginning of October. It is crazy to think that just 6 months ago, this was the week that we were so anticipating. It is strange to think now that October 4th will always just be "another day" for us from here on out! The nice thing is that Charlotte is officially a newborn now, at least when it comes to her corrected age. Now we can actually expect her to do all the things that a newborn does. It is just so crazy to think that, in a perfect world we would just NOW be finding out if Pip was a Charlotte or a Liam. To think that we have known this sweet girl and really gotten to know here for 12 weeks already is just so hard to fathom! It is also hard to quantify how truly in love with her I am. Just thinking about her and the way she looks at me or the cooing she makes as she eats or the way she and Will look in the morning as they face each other and make googly eyes at one another, or her little smirk,,, it all just makes me melt. I feel so lucky to be her mom!

For a quick update, Charlie is now just over 6 pounds and doing very well! Will and I absolutely love having her home. It feels so natural to be a family. People ask me what it was like bringing her home (at a hefty 4 pounds!) and if we had those usual parental anxieties. Of course there was some trepidation but I think having the NICU buffer makes our experience much different than the average. There were so many pros and cons from this whole experience. It is hard to believe now that I can feel as though there were actually POSTITVE aspects to this whole ordeal but I have to admit they are there. First of all, I was able to fully recover from my c-section and prepare for her arrival. Additionally, it is nice that she is pretty well scheduled (she eats just about every 3 hours!) as well as the fact that she takes a bottle. That makes it easy for dad (or the grandmas when they were here!) to take a shift in the night and allow me to get some extra rest. That freezer full of breastmilk is nice to have on hand too (we haven't even made a dent in that yet!) Plus, we have really been able to see our community (our friends and family... even our new neighbors!) rally around us in this time. We feel so blessed. By the end of her 7 week stay at CHOC, we aleady knew so much about our little girl, her eating habits, her personality and we had a strong sense that the best place for her was at home and that Will and I could be as attentive to her needs (if not more so!) than the staff at CHOC. In the end, we were certainly more excited than nervous to bring her home!
We feel so blessed to be so supported. Our church family has been so amazing throughout all of this as has our actual family. Lisa loves spending time with her niece and both grandmas were able to come and spend a week or so with us the week before and after our latest shower (which I will post about soon! It was wonderful!) Having them here was so great! I also feel that we have an amazing new support system since we made friends with her awesome primary nurses (Amanda and Kelly) and now get to go to lactation clinic once a week to get weighed in and have some support in the breastfeeding department (which, again, could be a whole nother blog post). In any event, we continue to be reminded of how blessed we are and how grateful we are for the health of our sweet Charlotte.
I know I have a LOT to catch up on since my last post... I promise to do a better job (and post a lot more pictures) very soon!
Thanks to all of you for being such a blessing to us! We are incredibly grateful for each of you!