august 2- i'd like a little less peep people

today has been a good day!

peace.

in rounds they lowered her peep (positive pressure ) to 5. it had been at 6. they're checking her c02 at 4 this morning and will be able to tell if she's expelling it when she exhales. after we get the results of that, we'll know if she can handle being without the extra pressure. (we hope so, this is a step toward weening her off the cpap altogether.)

this was going to be a picture for daddy, but mommy found it too horrifying.

this is the result of cpap prongs..

her nasal cannula sprint went AWESOME! she got down to 40% and hung out there for about an hour! she was on 30s on cpap all day. (except for a short stint where they were having a hard time getting a seal... the prongs weren't fitting properly.)

they also changed her gavage feedings from over 30 minutes on a pump, to gravity. (just like it sounds- they just hold the syringe up, and it runs in her belly.) the bolus gives the feeling of "fullness" like a normal person has. eat, get full, stop. (rather than the pump over hours...) when we get that "full" feeling it releases all sorts of hormones and enzymes for digestion. she's tolerated this well... with no problems. she is still grunting/writhing/whining/crying/gassing A LOT. it just started about 4 days ago. i think it could be caused by the hmf. (i caved on the issue. i'm a bad mom- i know. believe me when i say i'm losing sleep.it just seems like there are already so many things that i have preferences on... i don't want to argue about that too.) i guess it also could be that she's found "her voice". in general she is much more vocal than she used to be. or maybe reflux? (though she hasn't been spitting up since a few days ago... and they attributed that bout of spit-ups to the fact that she had been on the trophic feeds for a few days when she got her blood transfusion.)
nns didn't go so well today. she's been latching about every other day so far. i attributed her apathy to doing it during/after a feed.. but today she was good and hungry... and instead of getting down to business, she just stared around at everything..completely uninterested. i bet if she get's hungry enough she'd be interested. (but i suppose that might just be cruel. :) i am thankful for her alertness. she seems to interact with her surroundings, and be interested in everything now.

you want me to do what?

she's going to have wrinkles by the time she's 6 from that "concerned" look she always gives.

she was up 115grams today. that may not actually be correct- but it could be. that puts her at 3lbs 15oz! (we'll see if she's still there tomorrow. :) but, even if she wasn't really up 115 grams... check out this weight gain:

the one on the left is from 7.17

the one on the right was taken today.

(the purple dummy is a size smaller than the green one.)

i have had the most uplifting experiences with her lately. she just makes me smile. i love reading to her... watching her sat high to the story of narnia. (we're reading the magician's nephew. tonight was the creation of narnia. she LOVED it. although, i'm not sure she understood the correlation. :) i love listening to music with her... either on my phone (joshua radin station on pandora) or her ipod (she shares an earbud with me. :)... it gets harder and harder to leave her everyday... i think within a few weeks i just won't be able to bear it! i definitely feel like a mommy now. now i can walk in and pick her up. i can untangle all her cords by myself. i know when she's ok, and when she's not. i change her clothes. i change her bedding. i do her laundry. i put her to breast (though she's not doing much there these days!) today, i got to put her mobile up in her crib. i just feel like i have a daughter... and i can't wait to nap with her on my couch!
speaking of naps... i picked up her co-sleeper yesterday! i got a great deal on it at kelsey's. they do price matching, and also pay most of the shipping themselves... so they're able to cut costs. they've got ADORABLE things there! i'm going to wait until wren's daddy is back home to set up her nook. i feel like that should be a mommy-daddy bonding time. :) (she's getting a nook in our bedroom. we only have a 2 bedroom, have all the furniture to set it up as a spare bedroom, and were planning on getting a co-sleeper at first anyway... so she doesn't get a nursery until we move next year.)

this is a picture from this evening... snuggled in her supercute bed. thanks for the adorable bedding auntie rebecca. :)

she'd been on the mask (vs.prongs) for about 6 hours at this point.

luckily her nose usually goes back to it's regular shape. usually.

also, i'd like everyone to notice that her clothes match her pink and yellow bedding.

that makes me a good parent- right?

july 28- the real bath

today was uneventful. as expected, wren's oxygen needs have decreased. her blood transfusion finished this morning without event. they aren't upping her feeds until wed morning at 7am. she's going to start back at 15ml. i'm sure she'll sleep like a baby with a full belly!

the day shift didn't communicate to the night shift that it was unnecessary to give her another IV. the fellow had said it was ok to just stop her fluids and use the same IV site to administer the blood. (since it was only going over a period of 3 hours.) well, one of the IVs went out late this evening, so she would have had to have 2 anyway.

they had a set of emergency twins born today, so our family meeting got moved to tomorrow afternoon... i really need to work on my list of questions! eeek! any ideas?

this evening i got to give her a bath. not a sponge bath this time either! :) a fully fledged tub bath. (granted, it was in the same type of tub that i used to puke in in the labor and delivery ward...nice huh?) she really didn't seem to mind. she just seemed interested, and maybe a little concerned. we got all the cheesy yuck from behind her ears, in her neck rolls, and the creases of her legs.. this bathing thing is really complex! :)
her sprint went awesome. again, her oxygen needs are much less. she was on her back, on the nasal cannula, on 40ish percent!

i'll post more pictures when i wake up in the morning. they're super cute- and there are so many!

july 22- first bath night

i'll post the pictures of the bath tomorrow...there are so many i have to edit them down...
in the mean time:

this is how she was when we came in tonight. the awesome nurse had her bundled and on cannula for us while she read to her. what a dearheart!

here's wren all cleaned up with some clothes on. we went ahead and took them off before we left... but she's so cute in them!

today they moved wren to 3 hours on cpap/3 hours on cannula. she did good today. we'll see how long she can keep up that pace. i'm worried that it may be too much for her. but, she's proven me wrong so far! what a little fighter. while they're doing the sprints at 3 on 3 off they want me to hold off on the nns. :( i guess that's ok. i'm just bummed because i wanted to get that part started. i long for that interaction between mother and baby. (of course, i know there will probably come a time... 6 months down the road... when i'm grumpy about being woken to feed at 3am or something... but those days are much in the future for me now.)

i am also moderately perterbed that, yet again, a different doctor started his rotation and now we're going a different direction. you'd think i'd be used to it. oh well.

wren has had her primary nurses the past several days in a row. i'm spoiled! things have been going so great! i won't know what to do with myself when we get a crappy nurse again!

the bath was great... a success by all accounts. (she ended up less stinky, and got a little baby massage. what could be better?) she didn't mind the water so much as the washing part. (thadd says if she keeps it up she's going to be "that kid" in middle school. hehe... :) more about the bath tomorrow. there are a ton of pictures i have to upload.... but off to bed now.