Anna is now a huuuge 4 pounds and 1 ounces (1850 grams)!!! She ballooned a whopping 53 grams overnight and she is doing so well with her weight gain, I can see her hitting the 5 pound mark fairly soon in the future.
We tried mouth feeding her today. I won't get into details for the sheer reason that I might work myself up again. But after trying the bottle and the breast (she wasn't interested more in one or the other because she was so tired) we were basically told it's breastfeeding only, or if we want to bottle feed we would have to wait until she is 37 weeks gestation. Which makes absolutely NO sense at all; why would she know how to suck swallow and breathe at the breast and not at the bottle? She either has this reflex or she doesn't, no matter what she is drinking from. In any case, we will stand our ground with the bottle feeding for our own reasons and hopefully my nerves can last these next few weeks. It has been such a struggle with these nurses and lactation consultants. They really know how to kick a NICU mother down while on the ground instead of being supportive and encouraging.
In any case, Anna is still being tube fed 24mls of breast milk every 2 hours and has been tolerating her feeds very well. They are still fortified but the fortification will be taken away sometime once we go to the Level II hospital to see how she is doing with weight gain on her own. If she doesn't gain enough during that time off, then they will give us some fortifier to continue her for after she comes home. That is also pretty routine, a lot of babies take formula fortifier along with iron fortifiers after birth.
She also has a new pillow, the butterfly pillow I mentioned in an earlier post. It is to help her head get back t
o a round shape. Right now it is quite extended because of the simple fact that she lies on the sides of her head all day, 24/7. So, with this butterfly pillow there has been a doctors order to give her 1 hour of butterfly pillow time (on her back) each 24 hour period. The nurse practitioner explained to us today that we must insist that Oshawa does the same for her because if she is left to sleep on her sides at all times then she might have long term implications. So in other words, her head might be 'long' up until she's a toddler and it will take her a lot of time to grow out of it if we don't try and fix it now. I have noticed that most of the preemies have this same issue, so it's not anything out of the norm.
So very exciting, tomorrow is her eye exam and they said they will also have to squeeze in a routine ultrasound as well. Anna will also be due for her 2 month immunizations probably later on this week once she is in Oshawa. She is a big girl now for sure!!!
She just has such a lovely demeanor still, just very quiet and taking in the world around her. Loving life, sleeping and a full tummy!!
(We don't have many videos/pictures from today because she slept so sound and she barely even opened her eyes).
Marta & Arthur
We received some wonderful news today that Anna will have her eye exam tonight around 6pm and they will transfer her around midnight to Oshawa!
So I had a little chat with the charge nurse today and rumour had it that the eye doctor would be coming in to the NICU either today or September 1st. We initially weren't sure which day he would come in but it is now definitely Wednesday, September 1st. They don't like to move babies after an eye exam so the earliest she would be transferred is Thursday of this week, pending the bed, and ambulance transfer, yaddi yaddi yadda etc. It's all a big coordinated dance number, and everything has to coincide perfectly for the transition to be smooth.
So as the previous post sums it up, today was a bit of a disappointment. I could hardly sleep last night from the excitement of possibly having her so close to home. However, the key word here is "possibly" and as most things go with us, it's usually not in the direction as planned.
