Merry Christmas

This is the Christmas dress that Michelle found for Caitlin. She seems to like it quite well. We actually caught her with her eyes open for this picture, it was not an easy task.

Caitlin had a very rough day of sleeping, eating and getting lots and lots of Christmas presents. She says thank you to everyone who sent her a present. She absolutely loves all of them!

This onesie, from her Great Aunt Nancy (sorry!! Nancy! I love you!) says "Mom and Dad's best present ever" how true is that!!

This is the Christmas dress that Cait's Grandma Forquer found for her. She was very sleepy when we took these pictures. But at least she was staying still so we could take some photos! She seemed to like this dress too!

Besides the fact that Sean had to work Christmas eve and Christmas day we had a nice time. The Grandparents Huhn were here to celebrate with us and Grandma Forquer and Great Aunt Martha were here a couple days ago to see her too! Since we weren't expecting Cait to make her appearance until January, Sean signed up to work over Christmas so he could have Thanksgiving off. I was at the point of no travel so our parents came to our house and my sister and brother-in-law flew in for Thanksgiving. So, unfortunately, Sean had to work this holiday instead. But we did celebrate before he left for work today and we had a great time just being together and spending Caitlin's first Christmas at our house. That was truely special. We definitely miss spending this Christmas with Sean's family and we hope to get to see them soon so we can show off our little angel!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just because we could...

Here's Caitlin in one of my senior boots....why? Because we could. There is no other reason than she fits in them now! It won't be long before she won't anymore so we took the opportunity to take these while we could!

Two Weeks...already!

This is her teeny tiny foot!

There's those beautiful baby eyes that only come out at night!

Hey just wanted to give the updated stats on Caitlin. We had her two week check up today. Her doctor was out of the office so we saw Dr. Marcellis, she was on-call when we took Cait to the hospital for her jaundice. She was very impressed with Caitlin. She said that her color is looking a lot better, still has some changing to go but overall doing well. Her head looks good, the soft spot is getting smaller, the back of her head is good, no crib-head, her eyes are focusing well and her ears and lungs are doing great. She also had her second PKU today and she did very well with that too! Ok, so here are her stats as of today:

Height: 19"
Weight: 5lbs 14.9oz (she's almost gained a pound since we were last in the hospital!!)
Head Circ: 13 1/4"

When plotted on the graph she was in the 5th percentile for a full-term baby. When you go back by a month and look at it from the 36 week perspective she's in the 25th percentile. So she is still tiny but she'll start to pick up the height and weight soon. The doctor told us that early babies tend to gain weight faster and that she'll be up with the rest of her "class" really soon! The next appt we have is at 2 months and then she'll get her first round of shots, yuck!

Caitlin's New Swing

My co-worker, Liz, brought this swing over a couple days ago for Caitlin. Her two sons have outgrown it and she was gracious enough to give it to us for Cait. She wasn't sure about it at first, probably because she's a little small to fit just right in it at this point but as you can see in the following pictures she soon settled down and fell asleep! I think we can call this one a winner!!

Caitlin's First Bath

So we gave Cait her first bath a couple days ago. Well technically it's her second bath, the first being the one they gave her at the hospital! Anyway, as you can tell she was not impressed! However, she was a clean kid again. She's been well since we have been home from the hospital. She has transitioned to the breast milk stools which means that all that yucky stuff is out of her system and she isn't producing bilirubin anymore YAY!! She is still doing a lot of eating and sleeping! She's good at being a baby!!

Back to the Hospital we go...

So we had Cait's first doctors appointment, just a follow up from the delivery, on thursday. We went in and the doctor had the lab draw a lab to check her bilirubin (jaundice) level. It came back extremely high so we got to go back to the hospital. We were admitted thursday afternoon and were in for a long rest of her first week of life!

She had her first IV started in her right arm and several heel sticks for the bloodwork. The first day we were there she was stuck 7 times because I guess when the orders were written for the lab they didn't know there were multiple labs to be drawn so each one was drawn separately. Then when they did the bilirubin check, what we were there for in the first place, it hemolyzed so they had to draw it over again making her poor little feet pin cushions. It was not fun for her, me or Sean. We were actually pretty frustrated about the whole lab draw thing. She had another draw friday morning, friday night, saturday morning and saturday afternoon. Finally the last draw on saturday showed enough of a decrease in the level of bilirubin that the on-call doctor finally said we could go home.

So here we are again, at home, hopefully here to stay!! We'll go to her 2 week check up/follow up at the end of next week sometime and hope that everything is going well.

She was 5lbs even and 19" long when we arrived at the hospital on thursday. We left today and she was holding steady at 5lbs and almost an ounce!! She's eating very well and sleeps like a champ! Lets hope that continues in the coming weeks and we can get some weight on our little girl!!

Caitlin Amanda

Hello everybody! I am going to try to keep this updated as best as possible so you can see our Caitlin grow. Here's a little info to get this thing started for now:

Caitlin Amanda Forquer was born on December 7, 2008 at 8:59am at Providence Medical Center in Woodway/Waco, TX. She weighed 5lbs 13oz and was 19 1/2" long. Her due date was January 3, 2009 so she came 4 weeks early. Since she was 36 weeks when she was born and 37 weeks is considered full term we had an extended stay at the hospital. She was checked multiple times to make sure her lungs were functioning properly, she had to take a carseat test since she was born early and so small, which she passed with flying colors I'm told. They also did a hearing test for her in the room with us which she passed too!

We brought her home today, December 9th, and we'll be hanging out at the house for a while. The only thing we get to leave for is the doctor!! We hope everyone is doing well and hope to hear/see you soon!

All our love,
The Forquer Family