One Step Closer

Yesterday brought us an exciting development with our little Ellie – she started bottle feeding! That’s the last step she has to master (along with continuing all the other steps she’s taken) before we go home. And after a weekend like we’ve had, I’m ready to go home!

I normally don’t like to whine on here, but we’re both starting to go a little crazy. It’s been 3 weeks (!) and we’re just ready to be home. This weekend especially it’s been very beepy – a lot of other kids in here have had their monitors going off for various reasons (they’re fine, it’s more of the ‘think about paying attention to me’ alarm than the ‘holy crap get over here now alarm’) but they’re going off all the time. All. The. Time. I don’t like to talk bad about people, but our nurse this weekend isn’t my favorite either – she’s very capable and a nice person, but not the most helpful – and on a day we’re starting a giant new step, helpful would be nice. Anyway, I’m done ranting, but needed to get that out there.

So, back to positive things. Bottles! Ellie is doing great. She sometimes takes all of her bottle, sometimes takes part of it, and once so far has been strictly tube fed as she slept through her feeding time useful reference. Having to eat on her own is exhausting for her, so her problem is more that she just falls asleep than she doesn’t want to eat. Speaking of which, here’s the picture of her first bottle (she how sleepy she looks):

Her goal is to work up to taking 80-90% of her food by mouth for 24 hours. When she does that, they’ll take her feeding tube out. Then, they’ll move her to an ‘ad lib’ feeding schedule which means she’ll have to eat x amount of food in a 12 hour period and she can do that when she’s hungry. So she could eat every two hours or every four hours or somewhere in between. She could eat 30 this feeding and 60 at the next (well, that would be weird but….) as long as she eats her predetermined amount in 12 hour periods for a day or two, they consider her good. And, as soon as she does that, and still is doing great at all of her other stuff, she can go home. SHE CAN GO HOME!!!!

OK, sorry, got a little excited. Today is the first time they’ve really started talking about that step of the process. IF all continues well, we could potentially only be looking at another week. Man it’s nice to see light at the end of the tunnel. But,. it’s the NICU, so I’m trying not to get my hopes up as who knows what will happen. And I don’t want to push Ellie too hard, if she needs a few more days, she does. I’d rather have her be healthy and here a couple more days than home and not healthy, and I don’t want us to be disappointed.

So, that’s been our fun ?  Miss Elizabeth also received her Hepatitis vaccine today. She should get her hearing test soon too (both things are what full term babies talk about before going home after delivery.) Man I love starting to talk about discharge stuff.

Lastly, here’s a picture that looks weird and cute at the same time (I promise I’m not choking her):