September 16th

Today was my first day teaching preschool.  It was a lot of fun, with a lot of cute kids!  It's been a bit busy trying to get ready for today. 

Yesterday I went to see Kate and was able to hold her again.  After 30 min. the nurse asked if I wanted to keep holding her since she was doing good.  I almost had to laugh as I thought, "Is that even a question."  Kate did so well, I held her for over an hour.  The NICU is being remodeled and is under construction.  The babies have been moved to a new area, but there's only a wall between them and the noise.  Preemies are so sensitive to noise and touch- it literally hurts their nerves/brain.  While I was holding Kate, her oxygen was in the 90's and she was doing well when all of a sudden there was a loud construction drilling noise.  Kate's alarms immediately went off showing her oxygen had dropped to the low 70's (it's supposed to be between 84-94).  Her oxygen saturation level had to be turned up high to get her back to normal again.  She quickly recovered and did well after that.   It really showed how fragile preemies are. 

Today Kate is still doing great, but there was a concern because her sodium had dropped.  Her blood work showed it wasn't an infection.  It was most likely due to her immature adrenal glands.  She was put back on hydrocortisone again to help her sodium.  Her bilirubin is continuing to drop, but is still not yet where it needs to be.  Her hemoglobin is dropping also and she is right on the line of needing to receive another blood transfusion.  She will probably get one soon, but they wanted to get her sodium regulated first.  Kate's 4 calorie milk fortifier was stopped yesterday, because her stool wasn't normal (very runny).  Today she has done better, so that was most likely the problem.  Kate was started on vitamins and iron yesterday also.  She weighs 2.1 lbs. now!