Ella is Seven Months Old

Ella weighs: 11lbs 2.5oz

Ella measures: around 22.5 inches (she is always wiggling so I did an average)

Milestones this month:-coos
-tracking with eyes
-holding onto different objects and bringing them to her mouth
-gets excited when she sees familiar faces
-stronger head control

Ella loves: -making sounds and faces with mommy and daddy
-being outside -stroller rides
-the crinkling sound of diaper sacks
-Mommy snuggles
-nighttime chats with Daddy
-her girraffe paci "Gerald"
-staring at any ceiling fan-pulling on the links on her activity mat 

Health and Doctors:
Ella is officially monitor free! We saw all of her doctors this month and received good reports from them. The eye doctor said her eyes still look fantastic. There is a 90% chance that she will not need glasses. The heart doctor said the ASD (hole) has continued to shrink. The stenosis in her pulmonary valve has increased slightly, but the size is not concerning at the moment. The lung doctor said he does not need to see her again until February and he is pleased with her progress. We had our first visit to her

developmental doctor. She gave Ella an A++. She gave us some stretches to work on to help

with tight muscle tone. This is common for micro-preemies because they spend significantly less time curled up in the womb. 

I'm not sure where the time goes. Some days it seems to pass by quickly and other days it seems to pass by slowly. There are moments when I feel like Ella was born yesterday and moments when I feel like her arrival into our world was ages ago. But no matter how quickly or slowly the time passes, one thing is certain, we are head over heels for our baby girl. At the beginning of this journey with Ella I was not able to say that. Sure I was happy she had arrived and was making progress in the NICU, but I was still dealing with the shock of all that had happened. I did not feel like her mom when she first arrived. I mean, she was mine, the hospital bracelet confirmed it, but the feelings of joy that I had anticipated feeling for so long were momentarily on a detour.

I spent a lot of time in the beginning mourning all of the "should have been" moments. Looking back, I am not sure I would have been able to process things differently. When you experience physical and mental trauma you put one foot in front of the other and keep on going. A good friend shared a Bob Marley quote with me that captures it best, "You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice." It's true. You do not know they measures of your own strength until you experience something that takes you one step further. And by the time you stop to look back on your experience to offer it some thought, it has already become part of you and part of your life story. 

When we first brought Ella home we did everything according to what we had done in the NICU. We still felt tied to the schedules and routines we had witnessed for those 98 days. We were home in our comfortable environment with our baby questioning how they ever let us leave. Could we give her what she needed? Some days were uncomfortable.  Yet there we were, one foot in front of the other, moving forward day by day. 

And now here we are almost 4 months past Ella's NICU graduation day. I may not have felt very mom-ish at the start, but I can now say I am in total mom mode. We have found our own rhythm as parents and Ella seems to like us enough. She smiles and makes faces all day. She snuggles when she wants to and certainly lets us know when she doesn't. She makes the cutest oohs and ahhs and lets out the not-so-cute cries all in the same day. She is ours and we are hers and we will all keep moving forward together.