Home Sweet Home

After spending the first 45 days of his life in the NICU Riley is finally home where he belongs. Riley was discharged from the hospital last Wednesday and Ben and I have been getting used to having him home. Because his breathing is not yet 100% he came home to us with an apnea monitor that helps track his breathing and heart rate. If for any reason he has some bradycardia or apnea the monitor will let us know. So if you see some wires in some of his more recent photos that is what they are from! Here are some tidbits we have learned over the past couple of days about Riley:

1. He is a noisy sleeper. He makes a myriad of weird noises, including animal noises (see below), while completely asleep. The first night we brought him home we didn't sleep a wink because every time we heard a noise coming from his bassinet we both looked to make sure he was still breathing. It took a day or two to get used to the noises and not jumping up every few seconds.

2. One of the funny noises he makes resembles a goat. He went for his first checkup with his pediatrician yesterday. For the first part of the exam he was asleep and when his pediatrician was checking his neck he let out one of his goat noises and the pediatrician could not stop laughing. Of course he woke up shortly thereafter and the cute animal noises stopped and the crying began!!

3. At the pediatrician's we found out that he is now 5 pounds 6 ounces and 17 1/2 inches.

4. He is a great sleeper (at least for now). We usually feed him right before bed (around midnight), again at 4 am, and then at 8 am. He's pretty good about the four hour period in between feedings so we have been able to get some sleep every night. Lucky, lucky!!

Riley's Room

After much debate, Ben and I finally decided on a dinosaur theme for Riley's room. It is neither too cutsey, to babyish, or too sporty so we were both satisfied! Here are a couple of pictures of his new home.

Riley's aunties are the artists of the dinosaur paintings on the wall!! We couldn't find anything to put on the walls that matched his theme so they recreated the exact dinosaurs from his bedding set on canvas. They turned out great!! Somehow the two of them got all of the artistic abilities because I can barely draw fruit (as they all teasingly love to remind me!).

Milestones

Riley has been very busy and reached some very important milestones this week:

1. He hit and exceeded the 4 pound mark (as of tonight he is 4 pounds 2 ounces). It's amazing to think that only one month ago he was only 2 pounds 13 ounces! Ever since we've arrived back in LA he has really been packing on the weight.

2. He is now out of the incubator. Riley has been doing a great job of maintaining his own temperature so they have decided that he can graduate from an incubator to an open air crib.

3. He will be getting 2 or 3 bottle feedings each day to build up his suck, swallow, and breath reflex so that he'll be ready to breast feed soon. He had his very first bottle today. It's a lot more work drinking from a bottle compared to having it delivered via tube directly to your stomach so he conked out halfway through (having a bath right before his feeding also made him nice and sleepy!).

4. In less than 30 minutes he will be officially 1 month old - time has flown by!

(1) Riley after being weighed. (2) Riley and Daddy all snuggled together.

(3) After his bath tonight. (4) His first bottle feeding.