Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
First day home
We were released from the hospital on Saturday afternoon which was very welcomed. Poor Morgan was at the end of his baby patience in regards to Steve and I being gone. When we got home he started crying and just clung to Steve and then to me and then back to Steve. It was so sad and it made me cry a little too. I felt so bad for him having to go so long without us and not understanding why. He is relaxing back to normal though. Sunday we decided to have no visitors and made it just us all day so there would be no stress on Morgan thinking we were going to leave again. Steve discovered also that Morgan is cutting a big molar in the back of his mouth so that is definitely not helping matters.
Lily is doing perfect. She is such a sweet and calm baby. She seems absolutely relaxed in my arms and it's hard not to cuddle her constantly. I will admit I have been cuddling her non-stop since we got home. :) I have a couple days of cuddling to catch up on though. It is so amazingly wonderful to have her here. After all the initial stress at the hospital I am ready to enjoy these first precious weeks with her. I am pretty shocked actually on how smoothly everything is going so far. It just seems so much easier this time around. I am not completely stressed out and I am able to really appreciate and enjoy this time with Lily.
I can't get over how small she is even though she is the same size Morgan was when he was born she seems so tiny. The pictures do not accurately depict her size, she looks much larger in the pictures than in real life.
Here are a few pictures from Saturday and Sunday.
Lily is doing perfect. She is such a sweet and calm baby. She seems absolutely relaxed in my arms and it's hard not to cuddle her constantly. I will admit I have been cuddling her non-stop since we got home. :) I have a couple days of cuddling to catch up on though. It is so amazingly wonderful to have her here. After all the initial stress at the hospital I am ready to enjoy these first precious weeks with her. I am pretty shocked actually on how smoothly everything is going so far. It just seems so much easier this time around. I am not completely stressed out and I am able to really appreciate and enjoy this time with Lily.
I can't get over how small she is even though she is the same size Morgan was when he was born she seems so tiny. The pictures do not accurately depict her size, she looks much larger in the pictures than in real life.
Here are a few pictures from Saturday and Sunday.
The long road home
Yesterday Lily got a clean bill of health and was able to move upstairs with Melissa and I. What a relief to finally have her in the room with us. We got our reintroduction to the happy land of newborn with all its sleep deprived goodness. Melissa is recovering slowly and is still in alot of pain. When they gave her the spinal they hit a nerve, resulting in what she describes as 'the worst pain I've ever felt' shooting down her leg. Coming from Melissa that is not a statement to be taken lightly. Ever since she has had very painful pins and needles down that leg and even the slightest contact is agony. In a weird twist heavy pressure is actually less painful, it's light brushes against the leg that make things go crazy. They took an MRI on her back but didn't find anything. The Neurologist and the Anesthesiaologist both seem to think that this is a case of irritation that will pass on its own in a few days/weeks. We're hoping that's the case.
We're pretty much ready to go home now. I'm writing this as the three of us wait to get our final go ahead to walk out the door. I'm excited to be going home and for the opportunity to spend some time with my boy. Reports from the homefront indicate that Morgan has just about hit the end of his rope. Clingy, grumpy, generally unhappy, and getting more so by the minute. It's going to be hard coordinating our return, because from the second I walk in the door if one of us isn't taking care of Morgan there is going to be a serious baby meltdown.
One challenge down... countless more to follow.
We're pretty much ready to go home now. I'm writing this as the three of us wait to get our final go ahead to walk out the door. I'm excited to be going home and for the opportunity to spend some time with my boy. Reports from the homefront indicate that Morgan has just about hit the end of his rope. Clingy, grumpy, generally unhappy, and getting more so by the minute. It's going to be hard coordinating our return, because from the second I walk in the door if one of us isn't taking care of Morgan there is going to be a serious baby meltdown.
One challenge down... countless more to follow.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The state of things
Details detail details... we just finished going through rounds with the medical team in the NICU so I'm going to update this while things are still pretty fresh in my mind. Lots of lingo here that I'm not going to bother explaining, hopefully it will be clear enough.
When Lily was born there was pretty heavy meconium staining in the amniotic fluid. While her APGAR scores were 8 and 8 she quickly showed signs of respiratory distress. From what I saw on the monitors on her own her O2 saturation counts were at 40 - 60 and her respiration was at around 150 - 160 breaths per minute. For reference what they like to see is 92 or higher on O2 saturation and around 40 breaths per minute. They started her on blow by oxygen (just holding an oxygen mask over her) and her o2 saturation counts came up quickly but her breathing was still really fast. They decided that she needed to make a trip to the NICU at that point.
Once in the NICU they started her on an IV and got her hooked up to a vapotherm. The vapotherm blows humidified air plus O2 in through some tubes they put up Lily's nose. They started her on pretty high levels of O2 but since yesterday afternoon they have been working on weaning her off of that and she has been doing pretty good at that. Because the Vapotherm blows air into her stomach it was necessary to put a tube down her throat to vent that out. They also took a blood draw for cultures and tests of her immune system to check for any sort of infections. Finally they set her up with a round of antibiotics just in case there was any infection we needed to be concerned about.
With the vapotherm on Lily wasn't able to eat, so while she was getting IV fluids her first food wasn't until late last night and apparently she threw up the first stuff they tried to feed her. She had a very grumpy night, most likely because she was so hungry. I have to admit I was a little pissed off when I came in this morning and found that she had screamed herself hoarse over the course of the night. I was able to give her a bottle, which she ate and kept down and then she passed out and slept peacefully. Later in the morning Melissa was able to give her a bottle as well and cuddle her close. Which I think was really good for both mom and baby. It's killing Melissa not to have Lily close to her right now.
As of this morning things are looking pretty good. Lily is bouncing back quickly. Her respiratory support is down to just humidified room air, so no additional O2 needed just some help with flow. Her numbers have been excellent since last night and it's likely she'll be off respiratory support entirely by EOD. No news on blood cultures as of yet but she isn't showing any outward signs of infection and the tests that we do have results for have all been good. There are a couple concerns outstanding at this point:
1. She is still receiving respiratory support and needs to be weaned completely off of that. Once off they are going to want to monitor her for at least 24 hours to ensure that she is doing well on her own.
2. She still hasn't demonstrated that she will eat consistently as of yet. Past two feeds have gone well but there needs to be more of a pattern established before they'll call that good.
3. Blood work to test for infections is still outstanding and we don't have even the preliminary results (at 24 hours) on that yet. Final results will be available 48 hours from the start of the culture, which would be tomorrow sometime.
All said I am optimistic that we will be getting our baby girl back soon. Saturday is looking like the most likely scenario, with the highly unlikely chance that she will be discharged by Friday. If Lily bucks the trend and things deteriorate then we could be looking at a long stay, but I'm confident that isn't going to happen.
Now you know about as much as I do. :)
When Lily was born there was pretty heavy meconium staining in the amniotic fluid. While her APGAR scores were 8 and 8 she quickly showed signs of respiratory distress. From what I saw on the monitors on her own her O2 saturation counts were at 40 - 60 and her respiration was at around 150 - 160 breaths per minute. For reference what they like to see is 92 or higher on O2 saturation and around 40 breaths per minute. They started her on blow by oxygen (just holding an oxygen mask over her) and her o2 saturation counts came up quickly but her breathing was still really fast. They decided that she needed to make a trip to the NICU at that point.
Once in the NICU they started her on an IV and got her hooked up to a vapotherm. The vapotherm blows humidified air plus O2 in through some tubes they put up Lily's nose. They started her on pretty high levels of O2 but since yesterday afternoon they have been working on weaning her off of that and she has been doing pretty good at that. Because the Vapotherm blows air into her stomach it was necessary to put a tube down her throat to vent that out. They also took a blood draw for cultures and tests of her immune system to check for any sort of infections. Finally they set her up with a round of antibiotics just in case there was any infection we needed to be concerned about.
With the vapotherm on Lily wasn't able to eat, so while she was getting IV fluids her first food wasn't until late last night and apparently she threw up the first stuff they tried to feed her. She had a very grumpy night, most likely because she was so hungry. I have to admit I was a little pissed off when I came in this morning and found that she had screamed herself hoarse over the course of the night. I was able to give her a bottle, which she ate and kept down and then she passed out and slept peacefully. Later in the morning Melissa was able to give her a bottle as well and cuddle her close. Which I think was really good for both mom and baby. It's killing Melissa not to have Lily close to her right now.
As of this morning things are looking pretty good. Lily is bouncing back quickly. Her respiratory support is down to just humidified room air, so no additional O2 needed just some help with flow. Her numbers have been excellent since last night and it's likely she'll be off respiratory support entirely by EOD. No news on blood cultures as of yet but she isn't showing any outward signs of infection and the tests that we do have results for have all been good. There are a couple concerns outstanding at this point:
1. She is still receiving respiratory support and needs to be weaned completely off of that. Once off they are going to want to monitor her for at least 24 hours to ensure that she is doing well on her own.
2. She still hasn't demonstrated that she will eat consistently as of yet. Past two feeds have gone well but there needs to be more of a pattern established before they'll call that good.
3. Blood work to test for infections is still outstanding and we don't have even the preliminary results (at 24 hours) on that yet. Final results will be available 48 hours from the start of the culture, which would be tomorrow sometime.
All said I am optimistic that we will be getting our baby girl back soon. Saturday is looking like the most likely scenario, with the highly unlikely chance that she will be discharged by Friday. If Lily bucks the trend and things deteriorate then we could be looking at a long stay, but I'm confident that isn't going to happen.
Now you know about as much as I do. :)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Lilian Philipena Wax
Born 8:44am 8 lbs .9 oz 20.5 inches long
Blond hair and blue eyes, of course! ;)
Blond hair and blue eyes, of course! ;)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Poor Morgan...
Poor Morgan has managed to pick up his first sniffly stuffed up nose! It is so sad. He is very snotty and congested. It has made for an interesting past few days that's for sure. Pretty poor timing since he is about to go through a major life change on top of it.
Our friends Beth and Jim came over with literally bags of goodies for Morgan! Beth's daughter was nice enough to give up her giant stuffed horse and give it to Morgan. He loves it, but it is a little big for him right now. We also received a ton of awesome books, movies, and cd's for the baby. I am so very thankful for their generosity!
I posted this on Facebook, but realize there are still some of you out there that do not obsess over FB as Steve and I do.
So, here is a short video for your viewing pleasure of Morgan on his new horse...
A funny little tidbit about the horse is that it is just a tad larger than our Black Lab, Morwyn. Steve was mean and made the horse jump at her and now she is frightened of it. So frightened that when we let her near it she tried to chomp its face off. The horse is now safely behind a baby gate where it cannot be destroyed. :)
Our friends Beth and Jim came over with literally bags of goodies for Morgan! Beth's daughter was nice enough to give up her giant stuffed horse and give it to Morgan. He loves it, but it is a little big for him right now. We also received a ton of awesome books, movies, and cd's for the baby. I am so very thankful for their generosity!
I posted this on Facebook, but realize there are still some of you out there that do not obsess over FB as Steve and I do.
So, here is a short video for your viewing pleasure of Morgan on his new horse...
A funny little tidbit about the horse is that it is just a tad larger than our Black Lab, Morwyn. Steve was mean and made the horse jump at her and now she is frightened of it. So frightened that when we let her near it she tried to chomp its face off. The horse is now safely behind a baby gate where it cannot be destroyed. :)
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