Can you imagine a better birthday present?

I got the greatest smile today, what a great present for my birthday. Sophie was awake and very happy, I held her close and was talking to her for a while, she looked very contented. It might be all in my head but she seems to really like it when I talk to her, I was mid sentence and had to stop because my heart skipped a beat when the most wonderfull smile came over her. Now I don't know about babys and smiling and when they genuinely can do it and/or mean it but to me it was real and awesome. It made my day.

In other breaking news Sophie weighed in at 1695g today, that means she is 15g up on her birth weight after dropping from 1680g when born down to 1560g a few days later. Don't underestimate the importance of this, at the moment her weight is key and the main indicator of how well she is doing. It also means she is getting enough nutririon from her fortified milk alone and as long they can gradually increase the amount she is taking, which they did today, then she will continue to do well. Baby steps for a baby girl.

We had a fairly hectic on today, we had the family over for a roast for luch to celerate my birthday and to have a toast and wet Sophies head. It all went very well and everyone had a good time. It was not quite the tree slashing beer drinking BBQing free for all I had originally planned but at least we all got together to mark the day.

Other short term goals for Sophie at the moment:

• Maintaining her core body temperature out of the incubator. They have been gradually reducing the temperature in her incubator and will continue to do so until it reaches room temp, about 24^C in the NNU. She is currently at 26^C having started at up around 35. The nurse tonight said she may well achieve this and therefore be out of the incubator by tomorrow. Wicked.

• Getting off the monitor. She still has the pulse oximeter attached, thats the one on her foot to measure her O2 saturation. We can remove it whenever we want at the moment but she still needs it when she is in the incubator. I don't know what the criteria is for having this removed but I suspect it will come off when she comes out of the incubator, so maybe tomorrow for that one too.

• Keeping up her feeds, pushing them back to 3 hourly instead of 2 hourly and putting on weight. As described above this is all important and a gradual process.

Sorry no pics today, didn't take anything new. She is getting a new outfit on tomorrow though so there is bound to be photos of that :)