It’s been a few days since the last post so I wanted to catch up on what’s happened so far and where we’re at. Now that we’re settling into our new routine, I’ll try to post every day (at least while Ellie’s still in the hospital.) Just a warning – this is a long post.
Day 1 – Birthday!
For those interested, I’ll post a short version of her birth story in a bit. The big news on Day 1 is obviously that she’s here! Even though she was only 32 weeks, she was breathing on her own and doing great!
For those of you that have never had a baby in the NICU (which is pretty much everyone) here’s a little rundown on their procedures. The big thing to remember is that these babies aren’t supposed to be out yet, so they’re not quite like a normal newborn. Their brains aren’t developed enough yet to do everything, and they get overstimulated easily. Their brain develops when they sleep, so they try to limit stimulus as much as possible and allow them to rest as much as possible. This means a few things:
-The whole place is dark and hushed (except for the constant beeping of an alarm on some baby’s monitor which makes you jump a little every time it goes off to make sure it’s not your baby’s monitor beeping.)
-Ellie is in an incubator to help keep her warm and toasty
-She only has ‘hands on’ time every 3 hours. This is the hardest part. We can only touch her during her feeding/diapering time – which is only on a set schedule of every 3 hours. So we have to be in the NICU every 3 hours for sure and they’ll let us change her diaper, take her temperature and touch her cute little self for a few minutes.
Day 2 (Sunday)
On Sunday she hit the 24 hour old mark! Her vitals were all still good, and she got a feeding tube put in her nose and down to her stomach so she could start eating (instead of just getting nutrients through her IV.) At this age she knows how to suck, swallow and breathe, but doing all three things at once is too much. So for now we’ll choose breathing and let the feeding tube help. She started getting small amounts of donor breast milk, as what I’m only producing a teeny bit for now (but I’m trying!) She’s producing wet diapers every time she gets changed (every 3 hrs) and even a tiny bit of poop! (Gotta love babies where poop is exciting.)
The big deal for me is I got to hold her again (only got to for 15 min on day 1), and this time do ‘kangaroo care.’ There’s a lot of science that proves babies – especially preemies – do really well with skin to skin time with their mom. So, I got to hold her on my chest for a whole hour! It was definitely one of the best hours of my life! With her size right now, they’ll only let us hold her potentially twice a day – once ‘kangaroo’ and once swaddled – assuming she’s doing well.
Also throughout day 2 she started having more frequent ‘events’. Basically, she’d be breathing just fine and then sort of forget to for 10-15 seconds – which obviously isn’t good. This is very common and almost expected at her age, but it’s not good either as you need things like constant O2 in your blood. Her little lungs are doing great, but not quite ready for the real world yet. By the end of the day she ended up with a nasal cannula to help her out a little in the breathing department. She was still doing all the work on her own, but it pushes just a little bit of ‘flow’ through her respiratory system to help keep reminding her to breathe. Sadly because of her events they don’t let us hold her the 2nd time for the day 🙁
And, what you’ve all been waiting for, some cute day 2 pics:
Her first outfit!!
Day 3 (Monday)
This is a big day for us as they discharged me on Monday. Thankfully, because we have a baby in the NICU, we didn’t have to leave early in the morning but they let us hang out all day. However, it added to the stress of needing to be both in our room to pack/meeting with the various folks, and be in the NICU for her ‘hands on’ time, and try to pump so I can get this breastfeeding thing going. We pretty much didn’t have time to do anything but those three things – we sort of live hour to hour.
On the Ellie front, her events were happening a little more frequently so they upped the flow in her nasal cannula. Because of this, they switched her to a bigger one that’s humidified. We also got first experience of changing a pretty poopy diaper (which again, I’m strangely excited about.) She was doing well enough that I got to Kangaroo in the morning and Clark finally got to hold her for an hour all swaddled up in the evening!
By the end of the day her events had been too frequent for their liking, so they started her on caffeine. Yup, caffeine. It’s supposed to help stimulate her system enough that she stops having the breathing pauses. Again, they’re not really worried about them, but having to resort to giving her caffeine just means she’ll have to be weaned off it in a couple weeks. The good news is that’s a couple more weeks for her brain to develop and remember those silly things like always breathing.
And here are your day 3 pics:
Day 4 (Tuesday)
Day 4 was our first night/morning at home since our tiny daughter arrived, and that was a little hard. While the kitties were happy to have us home, and we were happy to sleep in our own bed, it’s hard being so far from Ellie J. Needless to say we woke up and came straight to the NICU and got here in time for her 11am feeding/diaper time. We’re also camped out in the NICU from today forward, so today starts our figuring out how that routine will work. It’s really nice just to be able to sit here with her, even if we can’t touch her all the time. The good news is pumping is getting easier as my milk is starting to come in – so that’s making that stress a little better. Plus, I’m getting enough that she isn’t using the donor milk (at least for most of the day.)
The other good news is that the caffeine seems to be working. When we came in she hadn’t had any events overnight – which is the first time that has happened! They reduced the flow on her nasal cannula as well and she’s still doing great. Because of that too, they put her back on the little cannula, which if anything makes her a little easier to move around. She’s also digesting all of the food they give her and she continues to ‘put out’ what comes in (in her diaper.) These are great signs.
Her big deal of the today is she gets to do phototherapy (what I refer to as her tanning bed.) She was getting increasingly jaundiced (which is the norm with preemies) so she’ll spend at least today under the fake sunshine. They’ll re-evaluate tomorrow and she may or may not have it tomorrow too. They even said she might come off, and then have to go back on at some point. It’s not a huge deal, just her body figuring stuff out.
On more fun notes, all of the nurses continue to tell us how adorable she is and how pretty her hair is 🙂 They also all note, like we have, that she already has attitude. She gets mad quickly – especially if you put her in a position she doesn’t like or don’t give her her food fast enough at the 3 hour mark. She also loves to stick her legs at odd angles and push against anything she can find – apparently she half propped herself up this morning off the side of the incubator – she was basically doing a pushup but with her feet 🙂 And my proud moment of the day was during Kangaroo Care time she kept picking up her head to look at me for the first few minutes like ‘oh, there’s Mom’ – that was nice 🙂
And finally, your day 4 pic – Ellie in her tanning bed:
