Our day nurse on Thursday was Karin (pronounced car-in). She is from Sweden, worked over in Saudi Arabia, where she met her American husband, loves to travel and has three grown kids. She is a FABULOUS NICU nurse! Even though we had heard much of everything they day before, she answered any and every question we had and told us everything she was doing as she did it.
James's mom came to the hospital around 8:30 so I took her up to the NICU. (Mind you, I had pumped after Kangaroo Care and didn't make it to bed until 2am and was then woken up at 6am for vitals and was exhausted.) She got to do Kangaroo Care with Timmy for about 2 hours before he started getting fussy and it was time for "cares". ("Cares" are done every 4 hours and involve changing and weighing baby's diaper, taking his temperature and basically doing an overall assessment.) I was beyond thrilled to change his tiny diaper. They really are. And the crazy part is how baggy the preemie diapers are on his sweet little premature toushy!
I cannot believe it was only yesterday and my memory is already so jumbled! James came to the hospital after his mom left and we spent some time in my recovery room (#7622) on the 7th floor. I checked phone messages and spent the next few hours killing my phone battery chatting with another pPROM mom who is due two days after I was and has been with me throughout this entire journey. It truly is amazing how much you can bond with people you've never met! We had a great chat. Then I ordered dinner, pumped again and headed back to the NICU with another miniscule sample of liquid gold. (I showed Karin how much I was getting earlier in the day - about 3 large drops total - and she told me that they could still use it. Yes, talk about being ecstatic! I know some of you may think I'm crazy or exaggerating, but spend 6 weeks desperately trying to nurse an infant and not seeing anything and you'll see why I'm so thrilled.) I only had about another 3 drops, but they combine it with sterile water and very dilute formula so he can still get the benefits of whatever I can give him.
We gave him his first feeding at 4pm. Only about 3ml. Basically, I just held the syringe with the fluid and let it drain into the tube that runs into his stomach. It was really just a tolerance test at that point and, when I returned for Kangaroo Care that night around 10, Laurel was there again and told me that he hadn't tolerated the feeding very well. It was just upsetting his stomach so she was extracting it as he worked it back into the feeding tube. Poor thing. He was also testing borderline for hyperbilirubinemia (jaundice) so they put him under some small lights. Unfortunately, this cut into my Kangaroo time severely, as I could only hold him for about 45 minutes before he had to go back under the lights.
Still, I went to bed happy yet again. Nothing like a good snuggle with your newborn to end the day.
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