The Clock Has Begun Ticking...

You know that feeling of the calm before the storm? That's sort of our life right now. We're slowly preparing for Anna's homecoming and realizing how incredibly unprepared we are. It's going to be really tough to live life without those monitors, to have to depend on our own parental instincts. All you parents out there, geesh, now we know what you felt all these years. Like the one nurse said tonight, there are two emotions of parents; worry and guilt. She hit the nail on the head there. If we're not worrying about Anna or how we will take care of her, then we're feeling guilty about our self seen inadequacies or again how we will take care of her. This little life depends on us fully and I think it's all just starting to sink in now. No more nurses, doctors, nutritionists, no more monitors, just Arthur, Anna and I. Oh and all of our precious fur-babies too. Yes, our life will now feel more complete, but in a sense it will also just begin again.

In any case, we are quickly preparing for Anna's departure from the not so glamorous hospital life because she in fact is just as quickly proving herself to be ready to come home. She has still taken every feed by bottle but that's also touch and go at the moment because it has only been one full day of bottle feeding. She has gained an amazing 71 grams overnight and now weighs 2221 grams which is about 4lbs and 14oz; almost to the big 5 pound mark! They also took her off caffeine, which we only learned tonight was a prerequisite for discharge. The caffeine to this day was helping her remember to breathe and prevent her from having spells. So as of today she is off, and she has to stay off of it for 5 days without any spells. That combined with the feeding and passing the car seat test and she will be discharged without problems! So based on the caffeine test, her earliest discharge at this point would be Sunday. Which is still amazing! The possibility of having her home with us by the weekend is just great. But we still have to see how she will cope with all of these changes. She might tire out, or she might just do great.

She has also developed quite the set of lungs in the last few days. I think since she is actually able to feel "hunger" now she's not as tranquil as she was in her earlier days. :) Here she is right before a feed...I just got a small snippet of her screech-fest caught on tape:



Marta & Arthur

She's all grown up!

Anna has officially graduated to a big girl bed! No more isolette, she is such a big girl now! So now she gets to finally wear clothes every day and get bundled up into a baby burrito to keep warm. They are trying to 'normalize' her for life outside of the NICU. This will help us all transition to life at home, which is nothing like it has been in the hospital the last few months.

Anna also finished 2 full bottles today on her own! The nurse said that she finishes them in about 15 minutes which shows that she has good coordination and does not have any visible issues at this point so it will only be a matter of a short time before she takes all of her feeds by mouth. She said sometimes they will take all of their feeds and then have to retract back to the tube feeding to get a break but that doesn't last too long. So the night nurse is also going to try her on an "on demand" feed as well tonight and see how she does (instead of feeding her on the hospitals' schedule). This is also more like how it would be at home.

In terms of when Anna would 'realistically' be home, the nurse stated that maybe even as early as next weekend. Now, we're not going to get our hopes by any means or think that she in fact will be home next weekend, but realistically in our minds maybe in another 1.5-2 weeks she should be home at the rate she is going now. She is just such a little champion and has really sailed through the last 9 weeks in the NICU.

So she is now 2150 grams on the dot, which is 4lbs 11 oz, so she will definitely be over the 5lb mark once she is released home. She is also on full formula feeds now which she has been tolerating quite well and her feeds I believe are 44 or 45 mls still.

There's just a few odds and ends we have to take care of before she comes home; shave the dog (haha), get some newborn sleepers (we never ended up getting too many, thinking that she would be full term and they would be too small -- HA) and we have to double-check our car seat because we are not sure if the weight requirement is on par with Anna's weight. The nurse mentioned to be on alert because they will just call us one day and tell us to bring the car seat in for the final test that she has to pass, and then the day after she would be home. So we have to start preparing.

So exciting!! Sounds like she will definitely be home before two weeks are up!! :) We are on cloud nine right now!!

Here she is tonight after her bath and fully dressed in her first little outfit:



Here she is getting woken up to eat, she lets out quite the cry:



Marta & Arthur

Num-nums!!

Anna had such a good day today! She had nice cuddles from Daddy and then she had her Auntie visit later on as well. We brought in some clothes for her to wear so from here on she'll be wearing only clothes from home. The nursing staff will make a note on her isolette and we will be responsible for bringing in new outfits and washing her dirty ones. It's really nice to finally be able to see her in all her little clothes that have been waiting for her since I was pregnant. It gives you a little control and feeling of parenting in this crazy whirlwind of the NICU lifestyle.

The other good news is that Anna's feedings have really taken off today. She had two tries at the bottle during the day where she took 15 mls each time, slowly but surely! However, tonight the nurse called us at home to let us know that Anna had her first FULL bottle of 44mls at her 9 o'clock feeding, and all in 15 minutes!! She was so amazed that she had to call us right away. She also made a note on the nurse's chart that Anna is to only have slow flow nipples (as we have been advocating for a while now). But it's so nice to finally see our wishes/thoughts/gut feelings play out in real time. She did wonderfully so hopefully she will be able to take a full bottle again tomorrow.

Speaking of full bottles, Anna now weighs 2100 grams on the dot, so it's only a matter of time before she is put into a crib! We think she will respond much better once she's in a crib since they will able to swaddle her with blankets (that way she won't crawl around as much). We, along with the day nurse, have a suspicion that she's crawling around her incubator a lot right now because she was so used to being swaddled at Women's and they don't swaddle her here at Oshawa because her incubator temperature is so much higher.

So all in all, a big and very successful day for Anna!

Here we are having some fun with her while she sleeps. It's just a quick snip-it taken with her Aunt's Iphone. Yes, many more torturous days await Anna when she comes home! :)




Marta & Arthur

Just another day in Level II....

Anna had a long day of squirming and trying to crawl out of her incubator again today! :) She just won't take no for an answer. Apparently all the nurses are saying we're going to have a feisty redhead on our hands here. She is quite the talk of the NICU already!

She will be out of her incubator soon enough though, I spoke with the nurse today and apparently she says most babies leave between 36-38 weeks gestation. Anna will be 35 weeks this Wednesday so that's really a nice thing to hear. She also will be put in a crib at the NICU once she reaches 2500 grams. Which is not really that far away since at today's weigh in she was already 2054 grams which is about 4lbs 8oz. I can't believe that she's almost 5lbs!

I also can't believe that she's having baths every other day now! She HAAATES baths but that's what makes it that much fun. :) Who doesn't love to watch a little cranky baby getting a bath? And let me tell you, she was SO cranky today! Cute...

We tried Anna on the bottle again today, she wasn't as interested today because she was working on some gas, both down yonder and up north too. But I think she managed to eat 10mls which is still pretty good. It seems slow at this point but one day it will all just click for her and she will just get "it".


The other thing is, I casually asked the nurse if they are still applying the butterfly pillow for her and she said absolutely. Apparently they are not worried about the shape of her head at this point the way they were at Women's College. The nurse mentioned that as she grows bigger and she's held more and has more tummy time, her head will mold itself back to a more round shape. So no worries there...phew...the Nurse Practitioner really had me worried about the long term consequences of lying on the sides of her head all the time.

So that's all the news from today, will keep you all updated on her feeding progress. I'm really excited because these last couple of weeks will just fly by. Next week we have the car seat clinic, and the week after she might slowly be ready to come home. Can't wait!!

Here's a couple of videos of Miss Cranky Pants from today (the nurses were kind enough to let us use our camcorder today):






Marta & Arthur

2 Kilograms, Yeah Baby!

She did it!! She reached (and exceeded if I might add) 2 kilograms! She is now 2029 grams which is about 4lbs and 7.5oz. What a big girl!

And no wonder, she is now having 43mls of milk every 3 hours and tolerating them quite well. The great thing is (although I don't have pictures of this) that she took her first bottle today! She had a full 15mls of milk by bottle and she did it so well. We weren't sure if she got tired so we hooked her feeding tube back up to continue her feed through her NG tube and she burped a real big one and then she started looking for the bottle again. So I think she would have definitely had more milk by bottle if offered. So maybe tomorrow we will try her on a bit more. The nurse and I were both amazed at how well she did the whole "suck swallow breathe" thing. We knew she had it in her all along!! What a little trooper!

This little trooper apparently has made quite the name for herself in her new home. The nurses call her "Little Houdini" because they settle her in all nice and comfy and 20 minutes later she appears at the other end of the isolette, facing in a different direction, upside down, inside out, legs all over the place, you name it. :) The nurses have no idea how or why she does it but I think it's because she's trying to tell us "Look at meee! I'm ready to go home!!".

As you can tell, we are still in "isolation mode" but we did receive a few results back and we were able to get rid of the uncomfortable face masks so that's great news. So, slowly as this isolation bit ends, we will start to visit her more often and get more involved in her care. Hopefully she'll have that tube out of her nose in no time!




Hangin' out with Daddy:
Here is Miss Anna getting her nightly weigh-in (and fighting through the whole thing!):



Marta & Arthur

Splish splash, we're having a bath!

Anna had her first bath today!! We just can't believe how relaxed everything is in a level II in comparison to a level III NICU. Not only did she get her first bath today, but she also got to have a break from her COT monitor (this is the machine that monitors her desaturations) for over an hour! This was her first time off the COT machine and the nurse on duty today mentioned that as she progresses they will slowly keep her off of it during her feeds and baths etc to sort of get us and her used to not having to rely on a monitor.

The nurse on duty today was really wonderful today too. She was so supportive of bottle feeding our baby and she even mentioned that they will probably start her on the first bottle tomorrow with the approval of the Neonatologist. She emphasized that the main criteria for Anna to come home is to be able to eat on her own for 48 hours straight. This will take some time for her to master, but it's not unheard of that a baby might go home well before their due date (40 weeks). In fact, she mentioned that many babies go home well before they even reach full term (37 weeks). That's really comforting to hear because it means that just because she is not full term, doesn't mean that she can't be just as healthy and thrive just as much as one that is full term. Also, it means that we might have her home as early as 36-37 weeks if she does well with her feeds. She is now 34 weeks and 1 day old so that's just around the corner for her if she does as well as she has been for the last 8 weeks.

Anyways, as you can see from the pictures, we are still suited up for isolation. We had some fun with our outfits today to make light of the fact that it was so uncomfortable. Apparently when her first cultures come back tomorrow we can ditch the masks. But the gloves and gowns have to stay probably until Saturday's visit still.

Oh, but the big news today (other than her first bath) is that she is now on feeds that are every 3 hours and they have upped her milk to 42 mls now to compensate for the increase in the time. It still runs through a one hour course but I'm sure eventually that will be decreased to half an hour as well. She also now weighs 1983 grams which is about 4lbs 6oz!

Here she is getting her hair washed before her bath (the quality is not so good compared to the prior videos and there is no sound; but that's because I wasn't supposed to be video taping but I just had my little still picture camera in my hand pretending to be taking pictures without flash the whole time muahaha!) :



Here she is having her quick bath, it looks rough but it's not. The nurse had to hurry it along because Anna is still a bit fragile and it is quite cooler in this hospital:



She did really good today and she barely let out a couple of squeaks, she has such a cute demeanor still! :) She is also really handling being in Oshawa well. I think she is loving how much quieter this NICU is than her last one. So we are very relieved, the nurses are nice, they are not bullying us into anything, the place is bigger, cleaner, newer and Anna seems very content with her new home!

Marta & Arthur

She's Here!!!!

Anna is finally one step closer to home! What a way to ring in her 2 month birthday! Her new temporary isolette resides in the Lakeridge Health Oshawa Level II NICU. Exactly where she was on the day she was born. Tonight has been quite long, so I'll try to keep this entry short since it's almost 4am now.

We got to Women's College around 9pm and did some Kangaroo care with her from 10pm until it was time to prep her for the big move. The Ambutrans people didn't arrive until 12:30am so they set everything up and took her on her way. She did really well during the ride and slept the entire time. Once she arrived at Oshawa around 1:30am, she woke up since they skipped her last feed in case the ride would upset her tummy. So it was really nice to see her alert and waving around again (even though it was only because she was hungry).

The nurse at Oshawa was pretty nice, she took us through the way things work there and I'll be honest, it's all a little bit overwhelming, but so was the Level III at first and we somehow adjusted eventually. Anna is currently in isolation for the next 2-4 days until her cultures come back. This is normal protocol to screen every new patient like this because every hospital carries its own germs. So it's just a safety thing. But this means that when we visit her we will have to wear gowns and gloves (and possibly face masks depending on the nurse??) until her results come back negative. After that, we can possibly get into a nice routine with her again.

So level II seems nice, apparently it's quite the busy place during the day and things are the same with visitors, only 2 people at a time and one must be a parent of the baby. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to have cameras there since they don't want anyone recording sensitive conversations. So from here on for the next few weeks we will have to use the still camera (which also takes videos but without sound). I will try to sneak in our regular camcorder here and there when it's not busy though. I would hate to miss out videotaping her development to keep for the rest of our lives because of some silly rule.

But Level II is a good place for her and she is definitely ready for it. Here is where she will start to bottle feed, she will have her first bath once she regulates her body temperature and we can have longer cuddles with her once she is more stable during her feeds. So it should be nice and certainly great preparation for life at home!

Anyhow, she is doing well, she has gained more weight and is now 1953 grams which is 4lbs 4oz. They said at Women's that usually once babies hit the 2kg mark they qualify to be transferred into a crib (so long as they can maintain their temperature) which Anna still can't fully do. But she will soon meet the first requirement, within the next day or so in any case! :)

Here are some pictures of her journey to Oshawa:

Here are some videos; the first one is of Anna having some Kangaroo cuddles before we left Women's College, the second is of the nurses at Women's College getting Anna into her travel incubator and the third one is of Anna settled in at Oshawa in her new incubator. She was so hungry at this point :)







Today was really tough and we are nervous to say the least with the new surroundings, new nurses, new routines but we look forward to her journey here at the Oshawa Level II NICU and hope that it's a short one at that! It feels really great to have her so close to home!!

Marta & Arthur