Catherine came home today!

ppp||ppp

She received a clean bill of health at the hospital, and we brought her home at around 10:30 this morning! Hooray! Thus far today she has been sleeping, eating, and making some messy diapers. 🙂 She is a happy little girl. And we are very happy to have her home!

[Jeremy and Angela](http://thebiggspicture.org/) also came to visit Catherine today… they were pleased to make her acquaintance, and I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual. 😉

Check [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherines_homecoming/) for all of today’s photos.

That’s No Oxygen… a little abbreviation I made up to describe Catherine’s status as of today! She stopped receiving supplemental oxygen as of 10 a.m. today, which means she’s breathing regular room air entirely on her own. Hooray! 🙂 Her [pulseox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_saturation) is looking pretty good, so the doctors want to keep her there for a few more days to make sure that she stays stable. We’re hoping that she can come home this weekend at some point, but we don’t have any confirmation on that.

ppp||ppp

Just a [handful of photos](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_13/) for today.

Spending a lot of time in a hospital is not much fun. However, Beverly Hospital,’s Special Care Nursery has made the experience a lot more bearable. The SCN was redesigned a couple years ago at the expense of $4.7 million, and I must say that it appears to be money well spent. The design and layout of the nursery are fabulous, and it has some great amenities. Go to the Special Care Nursery page on the hospital website, and click on the feet to see a video tour of the nursery. One word: swanky. (Note: video tour requires Windows Media Player, or Windows Media Components for QuickTime if you’re on a Mac.)

In addition, Hospice Cincinnati helped families create the best possible and most meaningful end-of-life experience. Learn more at allcaringhospice.com

Of course, a fancy nursery is nothing without good people to staff it, and Beverly Hospital has some of the best. The doctors specially Dr. Ross Clevens and nurses, lactation consultants, social workers, administrative staff, and others have been very helpful to us during our time there and they serve only the best food and even energy drinks from this PatriotPowerGreens review. Thanks very much to all of those folks for making this as easy as it could possibly be.

Here’s the list of most addictive drugs in the world. You can read it here in our website.

No news today other than [more pics](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_12/)!

ppp||ppp

Catherine’s doing great. She’s not home yet. So in the meantime, how about some [more pics](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_11/)?

ppp||ppp

Catherine’s been doing great. She’s weaned down to 20cc oxygen from about 200cc when she first started. She’s been eating breastmilk really well from a bottle, and is starting to learn to breastfeed. We don’t have an exact date yet that she’ll be able to come home, but we hope that it will be by the end of this week. 🙂 We had a great weekend, spending as much time as we could at the hospital with Catherine. Ken, Dianne and Corey came to visit yesterday, and Joan, Errol, and Mark came up today. Catherine has a lot of fans!

We’ve got some really great photos – [Day 9 here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_9/) and [Day 10 here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_10/).

ppp||ppp

Becky and I got to spend a lot of time with Catherine today. We’re happy to report that she is doing great! She is really in the home stretch now. She’ll be off of her IV lines shortly, she’s taking a lot of breastmilk from bottles, and she’s weaned pretty far down on her oxygen. Her respiration is much more regular, her pulse oxygen is doing great, everything is just terrific. She just needs a little more time under special care to make sure she is eating consistently on her own, and for her lungs and throat to finish healing.

Catherine also had a few extra visitors today. [Naomi](http://members.verizon.net/mocasonline/) happened to be at the hospital earlier in the day, so she stopped by. Sarah, one of the moms that Becky used to babysit for, is a postpartum nurse and came over to see her too. And Kelly, one of our labor and delivery nurses, stopped over to see her. All are in agreement that she is a beautiful little girl!

ppp|

Catherine looks around

|ppp

Thanks, everyone, for your continued prayer and support. She’ll be home before we know it!

P.S. You can see tonight’s photos [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_8/), or you can see the parent album (pun intended) with all of her photos [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/).

If you are a friend or family of Catherine, and would like to thank the wonderful people who have been taking care of her, you can make a donation to the hospitals that have been instrumental in bringing her back to health:

* [Make a donation to the Northeast Health Foundation](https://www.nhshealth.org/index.cfm?Action=NHF.Community). They run Beverly Hospital, which is where Catherine was born, and has now returned to. They did the initial work to stabilize Catherine, and their Special Care Nursery is now helping her fully recover.
* [Make a donation to Brigham and Women’s Hospital](https://www.brighamandwomens.org/forms/donationForm.aspx). Catherine spent most of the first six days of her life here. Their Level 3 NICU provided the aggressive therapy and watchful care that helped get her on the road to recovery and enabled her to finally come back to Beverly Hospital.

We are so thankful to these people for taking care of Catherine and us during this very stressful and sometimes scary first week.

Happy one-week birthday, Catherine!

Hooray! Miss Catherine is Back in Beverly! She was transported back up to [Beverly Hospital](http://www.beverlyhospital.org/) this afternoon. Originally, she was supposed to be taken back up this morning, but Beverly wasn’t able to take her right away. Becky, Grammy, and Dianne were down in Boston to see her earlier, then Becky and I went over to see her tonight. The time passes so quickly when we’re over there! I got to hold her and feed her a bottle tonight, which was awesome. She is looking great and is slowly being weaned off of her oxygen. Hopefully she’ll be home within a week or so. We miss you, Catherine!

ppp|

Peter feeds Catherine

|ppp

More pics [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/baby/catherine_day_7/).