Archives for November 2011

Geez, this week has flown by! I didn’t even realize it’s been 7 days since the last post. Here’s a run down on the week. We’ve had some great gains in growth this week. As of last night she is up to 2lbs11oz which puts over 1lb over her birth weight. She’s getting chubbier each day! She was also able to wear clothes for the first time this week. The hospital provides little outfits so of course some of them are really ugly and most of them are amazingly huge. But she really seems to like clothes…not that I ever doubted she’s be a little fashionista.

Yesterday was bath night and this week was Daddy’s turn to give her a little bath. She loved it and fell right to sleep after it was over. She had her eye exam on Monday were the Ophthamologist was looking to see if she had Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) which can cause blindness. Her exam showed that she did not have ROP. She does have some prematurity in her vision but that was to be expected because she still shouldn’t be here for another 8 weeks! All things considered it was an up week for sure.

It was such a good week in fact that Mommy got a little restless and now Sofia and I have a little secret. I was told that around 31 to 32 weeks they begin “lick and learn” where they allow to babies to get acquainted with breastfeeding. I asked early this week if we could start this and got some apprehensiveness. I spoke with the new Neonatalogist who is following her and he said his next goal for her is to attempt breastfeeding. Yesterday, during kangaroo care, she was beginning to root around because it was just before her feed began. No one was around, she seemed interested and I decided she wanted to check out this breastfeeding business. We attempted and SHE LATCHED! Then I got scared that she might actually get something so I pulled her off. She was not very happy about this last part. But the main point is she latched, we were told she would only lick and that was IF she was interested at all. She made it clear…she is interested! We have an actually appointment set this afternoon with lactation support, for now, our first attempt is our little secret. :

Hospital clothes are the pits! But she looked like a little doll 🙂

Looking like a “real” baby.

I think she’s being swallowed by her jammies. Haha

Geez, this week has flown by! I didn’t even realize it’s been 7 days since the last post. Here’s a run down on the week. We’ve had some great gains in growth this week. As of last night she is up to 2lbs11oz which puts over 1lb over her birth weight. She’s getting chubbier each day! She was also able to wear clothes for the first time this week. The hospital provides little outfits so of course some of them are really ugly and most of them are amazingly huge. But she really seems to like clothes…not that I ever doubted she’s be a little fashionista.

Yesterday was bath night and this week was Daddy’s turn to give her a little bath. She loved it and fell right to sleep after it was over. She had her eye exam on Monday were the Ophthamologist was looking to see if she had Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) which can cause blindness. Her exam showed that she did not have ROP. She does have some prematurity in her vision but that was to be expected because she still shouldn’t be here for another 8 weeks! All things considered it was an up week for sure.

It was such a good week in fact that Mommy got a little restless and now Sofia and I have a little secret. I was told that around 31 to 32 weeks they begin “lick and learn” where they allow to babies to get acquainted with breastfeeding. I asked early this week if we could start this and got some apprehensiveness. I spoke with the new Neonatalogist who is following her and he said his next goal for her is to attempt breastfeeding. Yesterday, during kangaroo care, she was beginning to root around because it was just before her feed began. No one was around, she seemed interested and I decided she wanted to check out this breastfeeding business. We attempted and SHE LATCHED! Then I got scared that she might actually get something so I pulled her off. She was not very happy about this last part. But the main point is she latched, we were told she would only lick and that was IF she was interested at all. She made it clear…she is interested! We have an actually appointment set this afternoon with lactation support, for now, our first attempt is our little secret. :

Hospital clothes are the pits! But she looked like a little doll 🙂

Looking like a “real” baby.

I think she’s being swallowed by her jammies. Haha

Geez, this week has flown by! I didn’t even realize it’s been 7 days since the last post. Here’s a run down on the week. We’ve had some great gains in growth this week. As of last night she is up to 2lbs11oz which puts over 1lb over her birth weight. She’s getting chubbier each day! She was also able to wear clothes for the first time this week. The hospital provides little outfits so of course some of them are really ugly and most of them are amazingly huge. But she really seems to like clothes…not that I ever doubted she’s be a little fashionista.

Yesterday was bath night and this week was Daddy’s turn to give her a little bath. She loved it and fell right to sleep after it was over. She had her eye exam on Monday were the Ophthamologist was looking to see if she had Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) which can cause blindness. Her exam showed that she did not have ROP. She does have some prematurity in her vision but that was to be expected because she still shouldn’t be here for another 8 weeks! All things considered it was an up week for sure.

It was such a good week in fact that Mommy got a little restless and now Sofia and I have a little secret. I was told that around 31 to 32 weeks they begin “lick and learn” where they allow to babies to get acquainted with breastfeeding. I asked early this week if we could start this and got some apprehensiveness. I spoke with the new Neonatalogist who is following her and he said his next goal for her is to attempt breastfeeding. Yesterday, during kangaroo care, she was beginning to root around because it was just before her feed began. No one was around, she seemed interested and I decided she wanted to check out this breastfeeding business. We attempted and SHE LATCHED! Then I got scared that she might actually get something so I pulled her off. She was not very happy about this last part. But the main point is she latched, we were told she would only lick and that was IF she was interested at all. She made it clear…she is interested! We have an actually appointment set this afternoon with lactation support, for now, our first attempt is our little secret. :

Hospital clothes are the pits! But she looked like a little doll 🙂

Looking like a “real” baby.

I think she’s being swallowed by her jammies. Haha

Let me preface my story by saying that Sofia had been doing great since Halloween. She had so much fun in her costume and apparently enjoyed herself SO much that she hit 1000 grams on Halloween night! It must have been all the candy she had. It seemed she adjusted great to her new room and was progressing well.

That leads us to the last 4 days. Well Mommy ended up with Mastitis again this week and had to take 2 more days out of the NICU. Daddy did a great job, as usual, of picking up the slack and making sure that Sofia got at least one Kangaroo a day. She had a great week and of course I suspected blue skies and smooth sailing going into today, right? WRONG! So, from the top…

I went in to meet a new nurse today who delivered the news that Sofia’s nutrition had been changed today to half breast milk and half formula in order to get her off the fortifiers and get her more calories. The fortifiers can be hard to digest especially at the levels she had, she tolerated it fine but they wanted to give her a break. The change wasn’t a huge surprise but the Neonatalogists are concerned with the lags on her growth chart. It’s concerning when the Doc’s are concerned…enter stressor numero uno.

I went on with my visit and decided that maybe me and the munchkin just needed a skin-to-skin snuggle to reduce the tension. Well that turned into a desat/Brady bonanza! She had a huge Brady that required quite a bit of stimulation (aka back rubs and gentle shakes) to bring her around, a rise in her oxygen levels and a suggestion by the nurse that she be put back in her isolette. Snuggle time revoked. Thankfully Jonathan arrived just as this was all happening. As we put her back in the isolette she began to react as if she was choking. The nurse sat her up, suctioned her nose and mouth and as we attempted to set her up to go back to sleep, we realized her feeding tube was dislodged. Putting that back in we watched as she chocked, gagged and had a sneezing attack as it went back in place. To make matters worse, her temperature probe malfunctioned and needed to be replaced. It’s attached to her skin with a very thick and sticky duck shaped sticker, this is like a band-aid on steroids.

As they were attempting to remove this she started to cry out for the first time during all this chaos. Around this point my heart broke for everything that she was going through. This put me over the top in terms of feeling helpless. I couldn’t even give her a hug or kiss to comfort her. I managed to make it to the hallway of the NICU before letting the tears flow. Not like she would know if I cried at the bedside but I just didn’t want to break apart around her. She rarely cries and just chugs through all of her challenges as they come, as content and peaceful as possible. I felt I needed to be her rock. So in the hallway I leaned on my rock, I was so grateful to have had Jonathan to just hug me in that moment. Even if we were both equally as helpless. It may have been a culmination of all things NICU that made me break but at least it was a release point and a clean slate for tomorrow. Chin up and the positive vibes are in place for a new day!

Let me preface my story by saying that Sofia had been doing great since Halloween. She had so much fun in her costume and apparently enjoyed herself SO much that she hit 1000 grams on Halloween night! It must have been all the candy she had. It seemed she adjusted great to her new room and was progressing well.

That leads us to the last 4 days. Well Mommy ended up with Mastitis again this week and had to take 2 more days out of the NICU. Daddy did a great job, as usual, of picking up the slack and making sure that Sofia got at least one Kangaroo a day. She had a great week and of course I suspected blue skies and smooth sailing going into today, right? WRONG! So, from the top…

I went in to meet a new nurse today who delivered the news that Sofia’s nutrition had been changed today to half breast milk and half formula in order to get her off the fortifiers and get her more calories. The fortifiers can be hard to digest especially at the levels she had, she tolerated it fine but they wanted to give her a break. The change wasn’t a huge surprise but the Neonatalogists are concerned with the lags on her growth chart. It’s concerning when the Doc’s are concerned…enter stressor numero uno.

I went on with my visit and decided that maybe me and the munchkin just needed a skin-to-skin snuggle to reduce the tension. Well that turned into a desat/Brady bonanza! She had a huge Brady that required quite a bit of stimulation (aka back rubs and gentle shakes) to bring her around, a rise in her oxygen levels and a suggestion by the nurse that she be put back in her isolette. Snuggle time revoked. Thankfully Jonathan arrived just as this was all happening. As we put her back in the isolette she began to react as if she was choking. The nurse sat her up, suctioned her nose and mouth and as we attempted to set her up to go back to sleep, we realized her feeding tube was dislodged. Putting that back in we watched as she chocked, gagged and had a sneezing attack as it went back in place. To make matters worse, her temperature probe malfunctioned and needed to be replaced. It’s attached to her skin with a very thick and sticky duck shaped sticker, this is like a band-aid on steroids.

As they were attempting to remove this she started to cry out for the first time during all this chaos. Around this point my heart broke for everything that she was going through. This put me over the top in terms of feeling helpless. I couldn’t even give her a hug or kiss to comfort her. I managed to make it to the hallway of the NICU before letting the tears flow. Not like she would know if I cried at the bedside but I just didn’t want to break apart around her. She rarely cries and just chugs through all of her challenges as they come, as content and peaceful as possible. I felt I needed to be her rock. So in the hallway I leaned on my rock, I was so grateful to have had Jonathan to just hug me in that moment. Even if we were both equally as helpless. It may have been a culmination of all things NICU that made me break but at least it was a release point and a clean slate for tomorrow. Chin up and the positive vibes are in place for a new day!

Let me preface my story by saying that Sofia had been doing great since Halloween. She had so much fun in her costume and apparently enjoyed herself SO much that she hit 1000 grams on Halloween night! It must have been all the candy she had. It seemed she adjusted great to her new room and was progressing well.

That leads us to the last 4 days. Well Mommy ended up with Mastitis again this week and had to take 2 more days out of the NICU. Daddy did a great job, as usual, of picking up the slack and making sure that Sofia got at least one Kangaroo a day. She had a great week and of course I suspected blue skies and smooth sailing going into today, right? WRONG! So, from the top…

I went in to meet a new nurse today who delivered the news that Sofia’s nutrition had been changed today to half breast milk and half formula in order to get her off the fortifiers and get her more calories. The fortifiers can be hard to digest especially at the levels she had, she tolerated it fine but they wanted to give her a break. The change wasn’t a huge surprise but the Neonatalogists are concerned with the lags on her growth chart. It’s concerning when the Doc’s are concerned…enter stressor numero uno.

I went on with my visit and decided that maybe me and the munchkin just needed a skin-to-skin snuggle to reduce the tension. Well that turned into a desat/Brady bonanza! She had a huge Brady that required quite a bit of stimulation (aka back rubs and gentle shakes) to bring her around, a rise in her oxygen levels and a suggestion by the nurse that she be put back in her isolette. Snuggle time revoked. Thankfully Jonathan arrived just as this was all happening. As we put her back in the isolette she began to react as if she was choking. The nurse sat her up, suctioned her nose and mouth and as we attempted to set her up to go back to sleep, we realized her feeding tube was dislodged. Putting that back in we watched as she chocked, gagged and had a sneezing attack as it went back in place. To make matters worse, her temperature probe malfunctioned and needed to be replaced. It’s attached to her skin with a very thick and sticky duck shaped sticker, this is like a band-aid on steroids.

As they were attempting to remove this she started to cry out for the first time during all this chaos. Around this point my heart broke for everything that she was going through. This put me over the top in terms of feeling helpless. I couldn’t even give her a hug or kiss to comfort her. I managed to make it to the hallway of the NICU before letting the tears flow. Not like she would know if I cried at the bedside but I just didn’t want to break apart around her. She rarely cries and just chugs through all of her challenges as they come, as content and peaceful as possible. I felt I needed to be her rock. So in the hallway I leaned on my rock, I was so grateful to have had Jonathan to just hug me in that moment. Even if we were both equally as helpless. It may have been a culmination of all things NICU that made me break but at least it was a release point and a clean slate for tomorrow. Chin up and the positive vibes are in place for a new day!