rooting.

When I first found out I was pregnant (after the initial shock and 'holy crap' feeling wore off) I spent a lot of time reading about baby behaviors. One thing that I found interesting was that babies all give the same couple signs for their main needs, like food.

One of the first things that a baby will do each time they start to get hungry is called "rooting". The article described it as when a baby turns their head from side to side and opens their mouth, like their looking for something to latch on to. Before all the heart-defect stuff took over, and we started spending more time researching cardiologists than crib bedding, I thought that would probably be the cutest thing my baby would ever do.

Throughout all the appointments with heart doctors and talking about her treatments and recovery that thought slowly faded to the back of my mind. My baby would be days - maybe even weeks - old before I'd have full access to her feelings, and by then she'd probably be able to make her own bottle, so rooting would be a thing of fairy tales.

Until I walked in to the NICU this morning and my sweet baby girl was lying there, making spit bubbles like a champ, and opening and closing her mouth. It just melted my heart to see her doing a "normal baby" thing. Granted, she can't turn her head to the side because of her ventilator, so I'm really only guessing that she wasn't just stretching her jaw muscles. It was pretty dang cute, though.

I took a video of her, I'm not sure how well it turned out, but as soon as I get home and can upload everything to my computer I'll post it here.