Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Nicu Day #7

Last night I absolutely crashed.  Well, to be honest, I had finally let myself accept that I was stressed and therefore "indulged" in some much needed "me" time.  Due to that, I never updated with an entry about Bella.  I, of course, feel super horrible but realize that there wasn't entirely too much to report on!

Today Bella turned 1-week-old!  In honor of this, I stuck her name embroidered pink bear wrist rattle on her crib.  Her what?  Yes, her crib.

Within the past 48 hours, Bella has been removed from her incubator, removed from her phototherapy, and is seemingly permanently on either oxygen or room air.  They attempted to bottle feed her yesterday.  Her first attempt had a successful suckling of 5 out of 45 mL.  After that she barely suckled anything out of the bottle, but she is indeed suckling. 

In case it's been too much change too soon, they didn't bottle feed her at all today.  She'd spat up four of her last feedings by the time we arrived today at noon, so they insisted we didn't jar her around by rocking her or passing her around too much. 

Miles started his Paternity Leave today, so he will have the next 10 days off.  We took full advantage of this by enrolling her in the military system, in TriCare (insurance) and soon we'll be going to the courthouse to get her birth certificate.  When we do things like this, I can't believe we have a baby!

Bella's pretty much at the end, I'd say.  When she finally decides to take to the bottle for all of her feedings (and keep them down!) they'll (probably) be sending her home.  If she's still not on room air, then she'll be sent home on oxygen... but that's okay with me!  I want my baby home.

Admittedly it gets harder every visit for me to walk away.  Coming home is depressing.  I love my husband, I love my cats, and I love our home... but coming home without Bella feels wrong and it's very depressing.  Although, I probably need to be here to at least shower and sleep ;-)

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