She's stretching to show how big she is getting:)
8 weeks old- 33 weeks gestational age-hopefully, half way there!!! I went and saw Kate last night. I hadn't seen her for two days and she seemed like she had grown so much. She looked great- it makes it hard not to wish I could take her home. She just seems like my beautiful, miniature baby. She looks so healthy! She weighs 3.7 lbs. She's been having all the fortifier nutrients added into my milk and it has caught up to her and made her constipated this week. Today she received a glycerin enema and will continue to get miralax in the milk to reduce this. She was weaned to a 4 on her oxygen flow yesterday and did really well on it. She is still on it today too and is doing even better. I met the eye doctor yesterday and he had just dialated and checked her eyes. He said he had expected to find something wrong with her eyes, because it's so common with micro-preemies. He said her eyes looked great and they were on their way to being completely developed in a couple weeks, which usually doesn't happen until closer to the babies due date.
I held Kate for close to 2 hrs. yesterday:) I still hate the monitor and how she swings so much. It about makes my nerves jump out of my skin when I watch it. Kate had a new nurse last night that I hadn't met. I warned her that every time I hold Kate her oxygen saturation drops and continues to swing after the first 15 min. The nurse told me that usually preemies swing like that because of acid reflux during feeding time. I didn't think much of it because she's always been this way and I thought it was just because I stressed her out by holding her. Like usual after 15 min. of holding her, she again started swinging. Her respiratory rate was all over the place from 130 (too high) to 0 (not breathing). A normal rate for her is usually between 30-60. I can feel her breathe when she lies on my chest. I can feel her little chest rise and fall as she breathes super fast and I can feel as she slows down to periodic breathing or she stops breathing all together. She had one apnea during the first hour. Her feedings have been changed again to a 60 minute period that she slowly receives the milk through the tube that goes in through her mouth and into her stomach. They like me to hold her through her entire feeding not to upset her tummy with movement. So by the time her feeding was over an hour later-I didn't think I could handle holding her any longer because of her ups and downs. The nurse had me hold Kate for a minute longer while she cleaned up the feeding supplies. I usually put her back in the incubator when her feeding is over. It seemed almost instantly that she stopped swinging when she was done feeding. I continued to hold her for another hour and the alarms didn't go off at all:) Now I agree with the nurse that Kate must have bad acid reflux that causes her swinging problems. The doctors don't usually treat it with medicine because it's controversial right now to do so, unless it's terrible.
Kate had her little face turned up towards mine for the last part of her holding and she kept smiling at me- at least 10-15 times. I told the nurse that Kate was smiling and she told me the Occupational Therapist (she works with their physical development) would tell me that it really is a smile. It's not a social smile like babies do when they are normally about one month old, but it's a pleasure smile babies do because they feel good. Kate had her tummy full and loved being held by me. It was so good to feel that connection with her! I feel less and less like her mother the longer and longer this goes on- I feel very disconnected from her-like I'm just a visitor. The nurse insisted that Kate still knows me. She knows my voice and knows my smell even after this long of being away from me. It made me cry- because I feel so distant from her.
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