Let me just say that it’s only been a few hours since our good friend Faith launched our GoFundMe page, and already we are totally floored by your generosity. When Mandy came back from pumping I told her the total raised so far and she got tears in her eyes. You are all amazing and we thank you SO MUCH, both for your generous donations and your kind words of support and encouragement. Leah has some fabulous cheerleaders in all of you.

As we mentioned before, Leah got her first feeding of breast milk today! They will increase the “serving size” gradually over the coming days and weeks until she is at full feeding through the g-tube. Until then, she will receive supplemental nutrients through her PICC line, which was placed last night. The poor little bug has little puncture marks all over her hands and feet, so hopefully with the PICC line placed, she won’t get poked and prodded in quite so many places.

I got to hold Leah again today! Yesterday I relinquished my “turn” at kangaroo time because Leah’s heart rate kept falling while Mandy was holding her and we wanted to get her back to bed. Today we talked to the doctor and she said it’s still okay for us to hold her even if that happens – we should just limit the skin-on-skin time to a certain amount of time until she gets a little better about remembering to breathe. We are holding her hand a lot instead. But today I got my turn. She looked so cozy! It reminds me of that first ultrasound where she had her hand up by her mouth. She’s going to be a thumb-sucker for sure!! We had to wake her up four times while I was holding her, so I only held her for a little while, but it was an awesome little while! She is so precious, and so TINY. She’s still working on her cry, so she makes these little crackly noises that sound like Gollum. “My preeeeshus, my preeeeshus maaaaamas.” We have heard a couple of little squeals out of her. Mostly she scrunches up her face like she’s going to cry but then changes her mind. OH – and check out her little folded ears! I can’t wait ’til her bilirubin levels are normal so they can take that mask off for good. She HATES it and keeps pulling it down, bending her malleable little ears in the process.

Here are some more pictures for your enjoyment:

This is babybug’s uniform today. She’s ditched a few tubes and cords but it’s still so much. She really dislikes the tube that goes into her esophagus, except when she decides it’s convenient to have a chew-toy right there in-mouth for her enjoyment. Sometimes she sticks her little tongue out around it and it’s quite possibly the cutest thing in the world.

Could you not just stare at this little face forever?

Tomorrow’s toeses today, in case I forget.