clean baby pictures

  

  

  

doesn't she look concerned?

she really enjoyed the bath in the water better than the sponge bath. i would recommend one over the other. it really was a bit easier with her in the water as well.

funny story: i was showing these pictures to a friend who delivered her (term) baby just a week or so after i delivered wren in the same hospital. she was looking at them and then said, "wait, isn't that.....". haha! she recognized the puke bucket! :) apparently she got to use the grey bucket during her delivery. she was still amazed that we're able to bathe wren in it.

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 26- 35 weeks and wearing clothes!

nicu day 53
that's right, today the dr. ordered that wren could be in "manual" mode in the isolette. :) i talked before about the different settings.. this is the one that is just controlled like we would control a room with a thermostat. before we know it she'll be driving away in her first car. (it's amazing that just wearing clothes makes me think about crazy things like that!)

check out my little bird- in clothes!!! this is a preemie outfit. it is just a tiny bit big. doesn't she just look...almost...normal?

she did great today. only really needing 30s to low 40s on the cpap. her sprint went well.. she hung out at high 40s low 50s. i'm just so happy that she's doing better than she had been. i was getting really worried there for a little bit.

daddy's finally getting the hang of holding her while she's swaddled. but he insists that she prefers to be upright. :)

her heel stick is on monday at about 4 am. so i'll post the results of that tomorrow. we're hoping her bone marrow kicked in and will finally give her some red blood cells! that would lower her need for oxygen by so much... we're also hoping that her gases come back good. if she's got low c02 then they could turn down the pressures on her cpap machine. (that's just one more step toward weening her off.) right now her pressure is at 6. this gives her constant pressure so that her little alveoli don't collapse when she exhales. if the gases come back good, it could mean that she needs less support. she's got such a long way to go in the next month or so- i wish she'd get started!

she's still tolerating her feeds... and doing great with them. i did see her spit up a bit today. i have only ever seen her with reflux once before. the nurse today was really great. we talked with her and one of wren's primary nurses to try and get her feeds lessened again. they've been going over an hour on a pump for quite some time now. we're hoping that she'll tolerate half an hour, or maybe a gravity feed over 15 minutes or so. this, again, is just one step closer to going home.

in the end, she's the boss. i hope she enjoys it too... because short of running the free world as an adult, this is the only time in her life when everyone in her little world will cater to her whim. (mostly because she needs it to live i suppose. :)

her primary is going to set up a care meeting for tomorrow. this will be an attending, resident, nurse, and us. (maybe a social worker- though i'm not sure what they even do really.) we'll discuss her progress, milestones for her to reach, and our plan to get her there. i'm really hoping it will help with continuity of care.

lots of hoping isn't it?