Strawberries 'N Cream

Ryan loves strawberries! He has since he started eating real food. They used to be called deedledees. Now they are just plain old strawbetties. But however you say it he won't turn them down (usually). He just recently learned that strawberries n' cream is pretty good too. The cream was "gross" until one day I had a temporary lack of judgment and insisted he "try" some cream on his strawberry. Oooops...that's all it took. Now there's less for me :(.

On this particular day, the day before I was "institutionalized", we had some fun laying outside eating our healthy snack. When there were only 3 or 4 strawberries left Nana asked Ryan to pick one out for his Momma. Ryan thought hard. Then...he graciously chose the half-eaten one in his sticky little finger placing it gently in my mouth and snatching up the remaining berries in the bowl!





I've been trying to eat as much fruit as possible while here in the hospital. It's a good snack...and...my OB said studies have shown a correlation between eating fruit and strengthening the amniotic sac. So when he said eat lots of fruit I happily obliged. I'll do most anything to keep Evan inside. Right now (from what I understand) the biggest risks are 1) going into labor/contractions and/or 2) rupturing membranes.

Other interesting facts I've been enlightened with recently.

• The steroid shots I was given upon admission to help strengthen/develop Evan's lungs are also shown to help with lots of other "preemie issues" such as reducing risks of brain bleeds and NEC. That's awesome! (Thanks Angie for that information) I still don't want another preemie though. It's a whole lot scarier to stand by your baby's bedside worrying about all the things that are/could be going wrong at any given moment in a preemie's life than it is difficult to lay in bed 24/7. There's just no comparison.
• Statistically speaking...for every day a baby stays inside his/her Mommy it takes off 2 days of a NICU stay. That being the case, Evan has stayed safely tucked inside an extra 8 days and has avoided 16 days in the NICU.