And the waiting is the hardest part

The first week home with Sadie has been wonderful. We're working hard on getting a routine down and spending lots of (sleepless) time snuggling, but we're also all spending a lot of time thinking about and missing Zoe.

Speaking of Zoe, our little pumpkin is doing really, really well. She's over five pounds, she's taking about 1/3 of her food by mouth and she's continuing to need less and less pressure with her oxygen! While that's all great news, in order to be able to come home she needs to take all of her food by mouth and she needs to function well with a bit less pressure coming through her oxygen tube. The doctors are shooting for her to be able to do this by the end of December, but the truth is, the only person who has any say about when this will happen is Zoe.

There's really nothing the doctors can do to hurry her along and the only thing any of us can do is wait. And that's not easy. Its not easy under any circumstances, but for us, the waiting is made more difficult by the fact that we both can't be there every day like we'd like to and when we are there, we usually have to say goodbye much sooner than we want to.

On the bright side, while the doctors can't really do anything to help Zoe right now, they do know that the one thing that will help her improve is growth. The bigger she is, the stronger her lungs will be and the more food she'll be able to take by mouth. So while Rich and I can't be at the hospital as much as we want, we can at least tell ourselves that our absence is allowing her to get some much needed, growth inspiring, rest!

Hurry and come home Zoe, everybody really misses you!