“Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God,
I don’t know but today seems kinda odd
Today I didn’t even have to use my AK,
I got to say it was a good day” –
Ice Cube, “It was a Good Day”

What does Ice Cube have to do with 32 being a magic number? Honestly not a lot other than it was a good day. Monday, Labor Day, people going out and enjoying the holiday taking advantage of wearing white for the last time. Monday, my first foray into dirt biking (which ended suddenly when I took a massive spill whilst trying to climb a hill). Monday, Casey turned 32 weeks (32 gestational weeks that is).

When dealing with preemies there are certain gestational milestones that occur. 24 weeks is the first one as that’s about the youngest a baby can be born and survive outside the womb. 28 week and the survival rate jumps up to 95%. 32 weeks and you’re good to go. Of course a baby develops much better inside of the womb, but whether they’re inside or outside they still need to develop. so even though Casey came at a month and a half ago, 32 weeks is still a huge milestone for her.

During the last trimester one of the biggest job a baby has is to put on weight. Lots of it. As you recall Casey weighed 2 lbs 4 oz when she was born. Since then she’s been working really hard trying to gain weight. So much so that she is now a whopping 3 lbs 6 oz! She’s basically put on 50% of her body weight since birth! Amazing. She’s now a little roly poly baby.

So back to Monday. It was a good day. We entered the NICU and noticed a few different things. First, they took away the big heavy blanket that was covering her isolette. They tell us it’s to help her develop an internal clock (although she sleeps like 20 hours a day so how much of a clock does she need?). Second, we look at her arm and noticed something odd.

Do you see that pink thing peeking out?

Did you catch it? It looks like a sleeve! 32 weeks and now we no longer have a little naked baby. She’s now wearing clothes! This may not seem like a big deal, but as they’re trying to teach her to regulate her body temperature they’re putting her in clothes and slowly turning down the temperature in the isolette (not too much though, they don’t want her to expend too many calories on keeping warm otherwise she won’t keep on her new layer of fat).

Well maybe she still has some growing to do

One of our biggest blessings during our time at the NICU are our nurses. They are truly unsung heroes when it comes to baby care. We figure we spend around an eighth of the day with Casey and they give her round the clock care. I’m sure she knows them better than she knows us.

One of our favorite nurses (some might even daresay our number one nurse) is Mariko (unless you’re reading this and you’re a nurse not named Mariko then you are indeed our favorite!) She is a sweet woman who happened to help us pick out clothes and dress Casey. As you can see below, this wonderful newlywed is showing us the outfit that Casey will be sporting for the remainder of this post.

Here’s Mariko making Casey’s top look minuscule

Now I would not consider myself an expert on clothing preemies, but let me tell ya, it’s way harder than it looks. For one, their hands are so tiny and trying to find it in Casey’s long sleeve top was like finding a needle in a haystack. Also, trying to pull it out of the sleeve terrified me because I felt like I was going to pull her finger right out (not to mention thinking her thumb would bend backward and snap off). I know that in reality those things hardly happen, but I’m sure they must happen once in a while right? So after Mariko finished in like two seconds, she waited patiently for me to finish my arm. But finally our little girl was clothed. It’s amazing how some clothes really made her look so much older.

Getting ready for her new outfit

Mariko showing off her mad skills

My vienna sausage fingers were having a hard time

Still working and looking for fingers

But now that our little girl is 32 weeks we’re expecting great things from her. We’ll monitor her to make sure she’s making progress. Yesterday she had some physical therapy and tomorrow she has her first eye test (I’m not sure how they’re going to make her read that chart but I’m going to tell her tonight that the top letter is always an E).

She’s making progress, but that doesn’t mean you can stop praying. Keep praying that she develops normally and that she can get that CPAP off her face so she can open her eyes all the time (or at least when she’s not sleeping any of the 20 hours during the day). She’s way cuter without that huge snorkel and mask. Trust me.