Claire's Adventurous Birthday

Claire is here! She was born by cesarean section Thursday morning, at about 8:00 am. She arrived almost 3 weeks early, weighing in at 7 lb. 4 oz. and measured 18 1/2 inches long.

I don't have pictures yet, but here is a quick update on Claire. . .Shortly after she was born, they did some initial work on her and laid her on my chest, but soon realized she was struggling to breath. Before long, they whisked her off to the NICU, she had quite a struggle for a while. Her lungs hadn't produced enough surfactant on thier own, which coats the lungs. Without this, we learned her lungs were sticking together, sort of like a wet balloon, which made it so she couldn't fill them up to get a breath. I guess it was a pretty big panic in the NICU for quite a while. They put her on a ventilator, which helped keep her lungs inflated. Getting an IV in her was also quite a trick. While all this was going on, I was completely unaware of what was happening, but after a few hours of not hearing or seeing her or Courtney, I began to realize something wasn't right. When we called down to the NICU, I was told that everyone was pretty busy working on her and that she was a "really sick little girl". As you can imagine, it wasn't a very fun wait. It's been quite a rollercoaster the past few days. Yesterday they were able to take her off the ventilator, which is good news. She has still been struggling trying to keep up, and they spent the day increasing her oxygen instead of decreasing it, which is what we were trying for. However, today she's looking a little stronger and I even got to hold her for the first time, which was WONDERFUL. It made all the difference for me today. I actually nursed her this afternoon, which was great. They'll wait to see how she tolerates it before we try again. Up to this point, she'd only had a few ml. milk through a feeding tube this morning. All in all, I think things are a little more stable. The doctor is thinking she'll be here at least another week if all keeps going well. I'll be staying at the hosptial with her until she goes home. She's quite a little fighter, and the nurse keeps teasing that she's naughty and likes to keep showing him who's boss. He says he's getting hesitant to tell us what to expect, because she does the opposite just to keep him in line. Today when they changed her feeding tube, he told us she gave him some "truck driver language" that he hadn't heard for a while!
She's a cutie, and has already captured out hearts. She totally responds to Courtney's voice, which has been pretty neat to watch. We'd love your prayers in her behalf. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can. Hopefully the news gets better each day!