Today.

Today, we cut off our bracelets.  Prior to..well, last night I was attached to them.  I wanted to keep them on.  I don't need to explain how I felt about them you, you've read that before...  While visiting with Zachary last night Laurie asked his nurse what she thought.  Her response is what made us take them off.


She said, take them off.  After being on your wrist going through showers and hand washings the moister starts to grow bacteria.  Bacteria bracelets are not good for Zachary. 


So, we waited until this morning and before I went to visit him, we cut them off.  It felt weird, but right.  Anything that we can do that is best for Zachary, we are going to do.  There is no way that we could forgive ourselves if he got sick from them, just because we couldn't part with them.  It was really anticlimactic, and we saved Parker's in his box.  We need Zachary's to get into the unit and to ID us when we take him home.


Thank you for all of the ideas, I do love the jewelry ideas.  That certainly is not out of the question being that jewelry is always nice!  I want to get a tattoo for Parker's name on my foot, but that's not going to happen until Zachary is done nursing and we can afford it. 


Speaking of nursing...  Today,  Zachary latched on for the first time!  It was...AMAZING!  My heart was (and still is) bursting with love and excitement for this milestone!  And, 2 weeks ahead of schedule.  We were told to let him practice at the breast so it wont be foreign to him once he starts to nipple his feeds.  His nurse today was all about getting him some milk in his mouth and really getting him to latch on.  He sucked a little from both sides right away!  When the milk started to dribble out he started licking like crazy!  Licking the milk right off the nipple, he loved it!  They say that a baby does not develop the "suck and swallow" skill until 34 weeks, that's when they will start to nipple his feeds instead of the tube in his nose.  Right now it is so exhausting  for him to nurse.  He slept so hard afterwards!