The Stats

Today Alicia is 3lbs 5oz! I think she's in the 3rd percentile. She's getting there. She spent 30 straight hours off of her CPAP but was having too many spells, so now she's back to two hours on it and two hours on the nasal canula. The spells signify that she's getting worn out from having to work so hard to do all of the breathing and needs a bit of help. Her aminophillin level was increased again too. Today she's only had two spells, I think. She's eating 9.2ml per hour. She is seven weeks old and 33 weeks gestation.

Today she sucked at my breast for a few minutes! She didn't get any milk, thank goodness, actually. If I had let down, I would have needed to take the breast away. We still don't expect her to swallow well for another week. But this was by very far the most she has ever sucked on it. And she didn't have a single spell the whole time! I was so very very proud of her.

Me? I broke down yesterday. That doesn't exactly mean I'm not doing well, though. It's a very good thing that I just cried when I needed to. This is just part of the journey. My sadness was around the fact that I can't BE mom. There are very very few things that I get to decide about my baby girl. We have a few outfits in her size that are in her drawer. I have them labeled and I have a note at her bedside to let the nurses know that those are her clothes. When I come and the nurse has put her in an outfit that belongs to the hospital I get so mad. Dressing her and providing clothes are two very small things I get to do and I just hate it when the nurse does it.

Yesterday's nurse only let me hold Alicia for 30 minutes. That's about what the doctor has said, but other nurses usually let me hold her for an hour. Two reasons to limit the time out of the incubator are to conserve her energy (use her calories for growing and not for staying warm and awake) and to help her have fewer spells. But yesterday she had gained 60g...2oz! And she hadn't had a single spell while she was out! I wish I had said, No, I'm the mom, she's just fine and I'm going to hold her for another half hour. But I didn't say anything.

So today I did. When I was ready to hold Alicia today, it was her time to be back on her CPAP. I asked her nurse if she could stay on the canula while I held her, and he said that'd be fine. Before I left I made sure that I changed her diaper and her clothes. It felt good to speak up and ask for what I wanted for her.

When we first got to NICU we had no idea of what was going on. We had no sense of how serious anything was. It was easy for me to trust the doctors. I still do, but after being there every day for seven weeks now, I also think that I'm ready to have my own ideas about what she's ready for. Now that we're getting ready for breastfeeding, I really feel like taking over. This is my realm.

In other news, Josh's dad, Ernie, flies in tonight. He'll be with us until Saturday afternoon. We'll be happy to spend some time with him.