Rory 5.0: Wireless Version

Today is Rory's 5-month birthday. He's doing so well! He no longer needs oxygen and so he is completely free of tubes and monitors. It is so great to be able to carry him around freely without having to carry along an oxygen tank and monitor.

Rory, you're just little!!! <3

He has learned (sort of) how to kick the corner of his play dome to make the hanging toys move!

Just chillin

New shoes from grandma! Now he's ready for a jog!

It's so fun to watch him learn things!

-He has discovered his hands and LOVES to eat them. Hooray for drool......
-He's almost an expert at holding his head up by himself.
-He is now very interested in hanging toys and mobiles. He likes to watch them and is starting to learn how to grab at them, but hasn't mastered it yet.
-I love watching him kick his legs and move his arms all at the same time.
-He likes to "gasp" when he is excited.
-He is now over 10lbs 9oz!

We are so happy and thankful for all the prayers, love, and support.

Welcome Home!

So much has happened since the beginning of this year! I can't believe we're already 25% into the year. There is no time to waste, apparently, so let's get right to it.

Rory is home from the hospital!!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are in the car, driving home together for the first time. 

So he got his breathing tube taken out on January 15. Hooray! Since then he continued to improve every week until he was given a nasal RAM cannula, which is an oxygen tube that sits just barely in his nostrils and blows in a tiny amount of oxygen. He also began to eat by mouth, so his feeding tube was put through his nose instead of his mouth so that it didn't interfere with eating. He did great eating on his own, but not enough to gain weight. So whenever he was too tired to finish eating, the rest was given through a tube.

He was discharged still on oxygen and a feeding tube. HOWEVER, just barely today we were able to take his feeding tube out, as he is a massively growing boy and does not need it anymore!!!

He now weighs 8 lbs 14 oz!!!

He is still on a very low amount of oxygen. He can breathe regular air on his own just fine, but over a longer period of time he doesn't get quite enough oxygen into his blood and it starts to affect his development.

Now, the parent life is real. :D

This is our third morning home together. We had been up at least 3 times during the night, Rory had just spit up on me and my favorite blanket, and I hadn't showered in 2 days. #bestjobever

First tummy time at home

Yesssss!!! I'm home!!!

Rory and Dad

Tough sleepy guy

He likes to sleep with one arm out. Even if we swaddle both arms in, he always manages to wiggle one out.

He's bigger than a giraffe!!

This was today. My mom helped me take out his feeding tube and replace his oxygen tubes, and while we were at it, we took some pics of "wireless" Rory. <3

So we've been doing well. We've been mostly hanging out at home, having mostly just family visit. He's still very fragile so we won't be taking him anywhere public until the end of April, when flu and RSV season is over.

Since it's his 4-month birthday today, I'll list some fun facts.

- So far he's been a very easygoing and calm baby. He doesn't cry very often, and when he does, it's not very loud. We're lucky!!

- He's been making really good eye contact lately. He even tracks a little. He likes to look at faces, lights, shadows, and...pretty much anything.

- He loves to be held and sleeps really well when being held, even if he's hungry.

- He's been pushing off with his legs lately. When someone is holding him in their lap he tries to scoot himself off!

- He looks like James!!!!

Sleeping while baby is sleeping....

I saw someone post this on Facebook the other day. This is my life right now!

But I must say that it is seriously AWESOME to live really close to my mom. Moms are the best. (Haha, see what I did there?) She, and my whole family, and James's family, have helped soooo much and it's been so much fun to share Rory with them. Rory, you are so lucky to have such a fantastic grandma!!!!

Grandma and Grandpa!

Great-Grandma aka GG!

Uncle Josh!

Great-Grandma Hyatt!

Aunt Emily!

Best Dad Ever! <3

Well, a lot of other stuff has happened between January and now, so I will be posting some more updates this week. 

Congratulations, Rory!!! :)

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Rory!

Merry Christmas!

Time for an update! We've had quite a lot of changes. First of all, Rory unfortunately got an infection. He was being treated with antibiotics, but the infection didn't completely clear up, and some of it settled in part of his heart. Because of that, he was moved to an even better hospital a few days before Christmas, so he can get the best possible care.

To be honest it was very hard to hear the news about the infection in his heart. But I'm really grateful for our family who were there to help up and give us love and support. So many people love him and are praying and thinking about him.

We got to ride in an ambulance for the big move. (We almost got a helicopter, but they had an emergency call! Bummer. But it's for the best, because James and I would've had to fight to the death over who got to ride.)

Here they are loading him in. If you look really closely you can see him in that box. All this equipment and a medical team just for one tiny baby!!! It really blows my mind how much technology exists and how good it is. I'm really grateful to know that he's in the care of such experienced and competent medical staff and has access to everything that he could possibly need to get better. 

Right now Rory is stable and seems pretty happy most of the time. We're just waiting for the infection to go away. In the meantime he's getting bigger and stronger! He's a little fighter.

A few other updates on Rory:

• Right now he weighs about 4 pounds! Wooo! 
• He has graduated from micro-preemie diapers to regular preemie diapers! (LOL)
• He is now on a conventional ventilator (as opposed to an oscillating ventilator) which means we can hold him! Hooray! 
• He is being fed about 27 mL of milk every 3 hours!
• He's starting to be able to maintain his body temperature all by himself. Yay!
• Almost 7 weeks old. Way to go, little buddy! :)

By the time he fits in all his adorable "1st Christmas" clothes, it'll be his 2nd Christmas......

Happy New Year :)

Welcome to the world, Rory William Moore!!!!

What an unbelievable past 3 days it has been. It's as good a time as ever to start up blogging again! And an excellent reason, if I do say so myself.

I know we just posted our pregnancy announcement less than 2 months ago on Facebook, but there have been developments since then! Keep up!!

This came as a complete surprise to everyone. I had no problems with the pregnancy or any warning signs that anything was abnormal. Sunday was just another normal day for us...until around 8:00pm when I started having contractions. I didn't have any idea that's what they were, and it was mostly just uncomfortable at first so I ignored them thinking they would go away.

They hadn't by 2:30am when I finally stopped trying to sleep through them. By then, I was googling symptoms of appendicitis and had pretty much convinced myself that my appendix was going to rupture. Baby wasn't even on my radar at 27 weeks.

We finally called my parents and we all went to the emergency room, me still thinking I was going to have an appendectomy. Thank goodness my mom was there to give the doctors the right information. I was taken to labor & delivery, and there they found out that I was already dilated to 10 cm and my baby was trying to come out bottom first. I'm extremely grateful that my OBGYN happened to be the on-call doctor that night. She arrived very quickly and said they needed to do an emergency C-section and that there was no time for an epidural. Everything happened really fast!!! They wheeled me into the OR, got me onto a table and then put me out completely under a general anesthetic, so after that point I remember nothing.

The whole time James was amazing. He was with me the entire time and held my hand, and he and my dad gave me a blessing. He was right there when I woke up from surgery. I felt so bad to see him looking so worried and sad and scared in the delivery room. And throughout the past 3 days he has really gone through a lot. He's been amazing figuring out all the stressful insurance stuff, paperwork, driving back and forth, sleeping on a pull-out couch by a drafty window, and doing basically everything for me. And the whole time worrying about his brand new tiny baby son in the NICU. All through it he has managed to keep both of our spirits up and make this a happy and enjoyable time.

Speaking of our brand new tiny baby son, I guess it's time for some pictures! All right. Here you go.

Rory William Moore was born on November 19, 2018 at 4:03 a.m. 

2 lbs 4 oz, 13.75 inches long

He will be in the NICU for about 10 weeks.

He's on a ventilator right now to help him breathe. He is able to breathe on his own, but needs help to keep the air sacs in his lungs from collapsing and sticking together. He needs to be fed nutrients and medicines through tubes, and also has a line going into his arm and through a vein near his heart. Some preliminary blood tests showed that he may have a slight infection, so he is on antibiotics to get rid of anything that could be there. He also has some jaundice and is under a bright blue light to help it go away. The headband in the pictures is actually to cover his eyes when they turn on the bright light. It must be pretty exhausting for the little guy to have all that done to him. He is doing so great!!!!!

Everyone has already been so supportive and helpful and just really nice. We have received a lot of phone calls, visitors, gifts, and texts and well wishes from so many family and friends. We are all really grateful for everyone who has reached out to us and also for all the blessings and miracles that we have seen from Heavenly Father. I know that God loves us and is aware of our little family, and that He is also aware of every person. He is deeply involved in every life. We are all praying for Rory and we have hope for him. We have SO MUCH to be grateful for right now. We are overflowing with blessings!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and Happy Birthday, Rory!!!!!!
xoxoxoxo

The Revival

On another note I finally revived my old ipod that Dad got me when I was like 14. The battery had long since died loosing its ability to hold a charge. I found online that batteries for them are super cheap so I ordered one. I also ordered a replacement for the hard drive. Now I have 32 gb flash storage as opposed to the 20gb of the fragile spinning hard drive that it had before.

I also took a calc test the other day. I got an 80% on it so I'm pretty happy. Miranda is pretty amazing for helping me so much in my class.