Day 1 of Life with Abbi easily melded into Day 2 (January 19) of Life with Abbi since they were waking me up every couple of hours throughout the night to check my temperature and other vitals. From my two overnights in the hospital (Lilli and Abbi’s births) I have come to the assumption there is zero rest in the hospital – even though they are constantly telling you to rest!! As they would come in and check on me every couple of hours I’d go ahead and pump some milk for Abbi and send Brent upstairs to check on her and drop it off. He always took his camera so I could see what she was up to, which was mostly sleeping amidst her mess of wires and tubes. I think only a newborn could sleep with that much junk attached to you.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning she was fully weened off all oxygen and Brent sent me this picture – her oxygen rates at 100% with no extra air!
So the next time we went to see her she looked like this – no air tubes taped to her nose. Clearly we were all smiles about that!! She still had her “paddle arm”, where she had an IV for fluids, and all the other chest and body monitors, but getting the air off was a good start.
Throughout the day we were to come up there every 3 hours to feed her ourselves. We went ahead and made the decision to start supplementing with formula – if she wasn’t getting the required amount of fluids she wouldn’t be able to have her IV removed, and without a removed IV we would be delaying when she could come home. Obviously that was an easy decision to make, and the girl was getting really hungry!
Love this artsy shot Brent took of my Pippin slippers up in Abbi’s nook. I had gotten all of my wires and cords removed fairly early that morning (by insisting my pain was under control and showing how well I could get up and walk to the bathroom on my own), so thankfully we only had to work around Abbi’s cords.
We got to spend lots of cuddle time feeding her and hanging out in the NICU that day. The nurses up there are wonderful and gave us as much “alone time” as you can for that part of the hospital, and always put up screens and made sure we had rocking chairs.
So tiny!! She has already grown so much since then….
She loves to have her hands up on her face, she did the same thing in our late pregnancy ultrasound pictures. And she absolutely hates having this arms swaddled and will just fight and grunt about it.
Daddy and his little girlie…
Throughout the day they continued to reduce her IV fluids every two hours, and told us that overnight the IV would be removed as long as she continued eating a certain amount each feeding. The hope was still that she would be able to room in with us on Sunday and we could all go home together on Monday. We made sure that day to make her eat by whatever means necessary – undressing her, making her un-cozy, and so forth because she really just wanted to snuggle up and sleep. They also started prepping us for going home by making us watch this really awful series of videos throughout the day. One was on CPR, one was basically on “not shaking your baby”, and one was a homemade video by the hospital of all kinds of baby tips infused with some really awful music in-between segments. But, the big plus was that we could feed and rock Abbi while watching these videos in her little nook.
We really didn’t have many visitors while we were there since there was no baby to show off and we spent most of our time up in the NICU with Abbi as much as possible. Our friends from church Wendy and Anna did stop by Saturday evening to visit us.
And the grandparents brought Lilli up to visit me. She really wanted to see her baby, and I know that was pretty confusing for her. She did greatly enjoy the adjustable bed and the fact that we had cable. We enjoyed the cable ourselves and Brent and I watched a ton of HGTV during our alone times.
And even though we still were wishing she could be with us in our room, we were very thankful for her continued progress throughout the day!
Adventures of Two Monkeys 