Out of the NICU and Updates

Miss Bethany is finally out of the NICU after 5 1/2 months. Of course, less than a week later, she ended up in the PICU with a respiratory infection, where she still is 2 weeks later. Alexander caught her infection as well, and spent 4 nights in the hospital.

Needless to say, things have been a bit busy here, and I'm only now getting around to packing up the bags I meant to get to earlier this year. I'm hoping to get those delivered this week.

We're set on blankets, unless you've got some knitted or crocheted ones. We're probably going to need to make a run to IKEA for more animals before our next batch goes out. I think we have enough outfits left, but probably will be looking for boy and neutral outfits if not for the next batch, then after that for sure. We have hats still, but could use more. We're adding travel sized hand sanitizer this go-around, and planning to add small notebooks too.

For the holidays, we'd like to do something nice for all of the preemie families in the NICU here. Maybe some cocoa packets or coffee packets? Maybe newborn or 0-3 months onesies? Not sure yet, but watch this space for more thoughts. If you're interested in helping out, let me know.

Gift bags in progress

Since we're hanging out in the NICU with our second child (also a micro-preemie), we felt it was probably time for another round of gift bags. We're short blankets for this batch so that's on my list to get sorted out this week.

With our new arrival, a name change for this little project is probably in the works. We'll update you more when we figure it out :)

Our first thank you card!

We received our first Project Preemie thank you card in the mail today. It brought a tear to my eye, because we never really expected thanks - I know we were far too busy with the whole NICU experience to even get through thank yous for our delayed baby shower.

Among other nice things, the card says "...receiving your gift and hearing of your story has really helped us to find hope."

And really, that's what this little project is all about, you know?

Two years!

Today is Alexander's second birthday. We'll be making a delivery of micro-preemie gift bags today in his honor, along with cupcakes for the NICU staff - after spending his first 9 1/2 months there, we still keep in touch with many of them, and they're all thrilled to see his progress.

Along with that, we're setting up this new public blog, to continue publicising our little project, and we'll be posting links to other similar and related efforts.