April 5: Brady Watch Has Begun

We're there. We are officially on "Brady Watch". A lot has happened over the past couple of days and it was a good weekend. Grandma and Grandpa Koelsch came for a visit. It was great to see them and show off how big Ethan has gotten and Grandma got to hold him for the first time. His overall progress has been great. Ethan's now at 5lbs 2oz and looks and feels like a newborn. He's gone 24 hours with feeding from a bottle and tomorrow he'll get the feeding tube out of his nose. He'll have to do all of his feeds by bottle for 48 hours without the tube and we can check feeding on his own off his list. Next is the Brady. We had gone 7 days with out a Brady...until yesterday. He had one at 7:30pm. We weren't really on Brady watch then b/c he wasn't taking all of his bottles. But we are today, and we're starting from scratch.

So, throughout the weekend, the nurses have been going through the checklist with us and making sure we are all ready. Do we have our classes done? Close: Infant CPR is on Tuesday (check). We should bring in his car seat (check). And, last but not least and pretty traumatizing on top of it all...the circumcision. We are to schedule it for tomorrow or Tuesday. They usually do this just days before the baby is released (check). !!!! What does this all mean? I hope I'm not jinxing us by saying this, but Ethan could be home by Friday!! It's so hard to believe, but we're that close (knock on wood). This morning, we put our final "must have" list of items together and Jon ran to BabiesRUs. Now, we are ready for everything. It doesn't seem real yet. I'm sure it won't until he is in that car seat and we are driving off from the hospital.

Please...keep us in your thoughts and pray for no Brady's. I think I will have a mini-meltdown if the they start up again when it really matters after he went 7 days without one.

PS...see pix below...Ethan doing his best 'Baby Elvis' impression. He's a natural, don't you think?