Lenay

Lenay was named after my dad.  Which is so appropriate, given her personality.  (My dad's name was David Len Cease.  Len was taken from his grandfather's name, Leonard, a man whom my dad cherished.  My dad died of AML at the age of 57, just 2 weeks before Noah's first birthday, and 4 years before the twins were born.  He is dearly missed.)

Dad and Noah :)

 

Lenay is our little fighter.  Always has been.  From minute one.

And she's always been the first to do everything.  Pretty typical for Baby A.

(Babies are labeled alphabetically in birth order.  Even after we gave the babies names, Baby A and Baby B White graced their charts and wristbands.  And even once their names were recognized by the hospital, they were still Lenay A White and Campbell B White!  They so desperately don't want to mix anything up.)

Lenay was always super active in utero - it was hard to get a good look at her on the monitor because she was always moving.  And she's always in a hurry.  She was in a hurry to be born.  And even now, she just can't ever sit still. 

Just like her namesake!

Lenay's PDA did not respond to medicine, which was bad news.  The good news was that even though her murmur was loud and her PDA moderate, she was not presenting with any breathing or digestive problems.  So as a result, our neo took the "wait and see" approach.  She was closely monitored by cardiology with routine EKGs and echocardiograms, and cardiology would continue to follow her after she left the NICU.  It was unlikely that her PDA would close on its own at this point.  But as long as she was asymptomatic, we could wait on the heart surgery until she was bigger.

Other than that, Lenay's NICU stay was fairly uneventful.  She moved up on her feeding schedule nicely, and I was able to nurse her a couple times a day by the time she was discharged.

(Sidenote: The nurses put hats on the babies to help keep them warm.  The hats are just random, from the NICU's stash of donated clothes, but we found it amusing that Lenay somehow ended up with a Caterpillar hat, the company at which my dad worked for 32 years :)

She was doing so great that our neo didn't even think she needed to be sent home on an apnea monitor. But being the neurotic mom that I am, I insisted on the monitor for our piece of mind.  :)

I mean come on, she still only weighed 3 lbs!

She did need hernia repair surgery a few days before she left the NICU.  Which she breezed right through.

Its funny.  When I was nearing the end of my shortened pregnancy and we were praying over these unborn babies, I was so much more worried about Baby A.  She was the tiny one. 

Will she make it? 

Does a 2 lb baby have what it takes to fight for her little life?

The answer:

By the grace of God, she absolutely does.