She's Home!

Georgyana came home from NICU Thursday evening around 7pm. She didn't sleep that 1st night home & so, I spent all of Friday catching up on sleep. Friday night, we tried keeping lights & sound (TV) running all night, and this kept her sleeping for 1-2 hour intervals. She's a much more active creature from her big sis at this age (34.5 weeks gestation). When Z came home from NICU she slept quietly for 2.5-3 hr intervals.

Tubeless!!

Here is Georgyana, tubeless and in a normal crib (rather than the heated isolette). She'll be 35 weeks gestational age on Sunday, and 4 weeks birth age on Friday. The neonatologist does not want to let her go yet. I have no idea when they will let her come home. It is nice to see her without the feeding tube taped to her face, and to look in on her from a regular crib, rather than the enclosed isolette walls.

Weekly Review

The kids have mostly been doing their work independently. I still need to check over their books to see what they've been doing this week, lol.

On Wednesday, I felt very worn out, and ended up taking a few cat naps throughout the day. The kids were troopers and sat down at the table to do their schoolwork while I rested. Thurs & Friday, the kids did school during Daddy's watch, while I made the long trip to NICU.

3rd grade:
In Math, the 8yo finished the chapter on Graphs. Still need to check her work! In English, she finished the chapter on subjects/predicates, run-ons, fragments, types of sentences, compound sentences, etc. She completed a few Reading assignments. With her Familiar Quotations copywork, she read/copied sentences from people like Aesop and Lao-Tzu, which we also discussed. Her Spelling words were all CVC + ed, er, or est. We have not tested on the words yet, but I'm sure she'll do well.

1st grade:
In Math, she reviewed addition strategies. For Reading, she read about 10 pages per day of Capyboppy (it has lots of hard words and I wonder how much of those hard words she actually understood, but she did a great job reading). In English/Phonics, she is on the last unit, and so there is a lot of review. She worked in her Handwriting book all week, except today, because they couldn't find the book, so she wrote me a nice letter instead. She practiced her Spelling words on spellingcity.com, but we haven't done the test.

We haven't done much science or history, but I think we can be excused under the circumstances. Right now, its all sort of Bonus School.

As for me, my blood pressure keeps coming down, and we keep decreasing the level of the meds. Yay!

Georgyana is up to 3lbs 5.6 oz. As of last night, she took all her feeds by bottle, and if she can keep it up for a full 24hrs, then they will remove the gavage tube from her nose (yay!). Yesterday, her stomach was really bloated from gas, but it seems to have resolved itself today. She was much happier today. I held her for a few hours today and fed her by bottle - there were a few times that she was awake and alert.

Before the neonatologist will let Georgyana go home, she has to take all of her feeds by bottle for 48 hrs, and she has to be in a regular crib for 48 hours.

And yet...another update

I am homeschooling 2 kids, while pumping breastmilk every 3 hours (or at least *trying* to stick to that schedule!), and making daily trips to the hospital (a 45-min drive one way). I am also recovering from a c-section. Phew!!! No wonder I'm tired! Most of the time, I don't think about it. I just do the next thing that needs to be done. I think this keeps me sane and productive. It also keeps me happy and not overwhelmed.

Georgyana is up to 3lbs 1.7 oz. She's in a special care nursery room with a set of twin girls. Georgyana is 33.5 weeks gestation and the twins are 35 weeks gestation. The one twin girl will probably go home this weekend. The twin is in a regular crib, instead of the heated isolette, and doing well. The other twin will be hanging out with Georgyana a little longer. It's amazing to me to think that we are only 1.5-2 weeks away from that 35 week point. It is quite possible that Georgyana might go home in another 2 weeks. Can you imagine having a 35 weeker at home with you? Scary thought!! I think lil' Z went home around the 34-35 week point (she was 29.5 weeks gestation at birth and went home about 35 days later, so whatever that works out to be!) We've attempted breastfeeding once, which involved her teeny tiny mouth chomping experimentally on the end of my nipple (ouch!). After my last experience with Z, I understand preemie breastfeeding better now to know that she probably isn't going to be ready to nurse for awhile. When she gets home, we'll try nursing 1-2 times per day, until I start seeing improvement in latch. Once the latch thing happens, then the next thing that has to happen is developing a strong suck. This seems to take preemies (especially very early, small preemies) a long time to learn. With Z, I was impatient and frustrated; I think I gave up on her too early. I think I will be more patient this time around. I'm hearing stories about preemies that didn't learn to nurse until 1 month, 3 months, and even 9 months!

Weekly Review

Been awhile since a good weekly review:) So here it is!

We fit school in there somewhere, a few times this week.

Monday: The kids did school at Grandpa & Uncle's house. They got up early and got it all done before 9:30am so that they could play. I came home from the hospital that morning, but I can't really remember what I did, lol (maybe it was the magnesium sulfate affecting my brain).

Tuesday: did some school, went to the hospital to visit Georgyana, and then stopped by great-grandma & great aunt's house.

Wednesday: husband went to work and I took it easy - was still worried about my blood pressure. I did school with the kids, made lunch & breakfast, but mostly took it easy.

Thursday: took the day off of school to run errands, go to a dr appt, & a hospital run.

Friday: full day of school and we cleaned the main family rooms together (kitchen, dining room, living room & did some laundry).

3rd grade:
In Math, the 8yo finished her chapter on subtraction with renaming with double renaming in the tens place (not sure what that is called). She started the chapter on reading graphs (easy!). In English, she is learning about types of sentences and combining sentences with "and". She did a Skill Station Day in Reading and read a 2-day story, with comprehension questions. For Familiar Quotations, she is reading/copying quotations from people I've never heard of before (I think they must be Greek writers/philosophers - she finished the section on Homer, but the other guys don't sound familiar to me). We finished a Spelling word list that I think we've been working on for the past 3 weeks and can't remember if we actually finished it 3 weeks ago, but now it is officially finished! yay! lol. It was CVC + ing words and CVCe + ing words. She scored 100%.

1st/2nd grade:
In Math, the 6yo is revisiting addition strategies (1st grade review in the 2nd gr book). In Spelling, we had the same issue as above - still had a list of words from 3 weeks ago to finish. In Reading, I have not ordered the new 2nd gr books yet, so she just grabs a book from the shelf and reads to me (she loves this!). In English/Phonics, it has been reviewing phonics skills, teaching about describing words, and -er -est words (comparing 2 items or more than 2). She continues to progress through her Handwriting book.

Photos of the family

More photos

I took these a few days ago - I think this was before I ended up back at the hospital. This was after sitting together skin-to-skin. Her weight keeps fluctuating - gaining, loosing, gaining, loosing. I'm eager for her to start packing on the pounds!

My weight has dropped about 30 lbs since I came home from the hospital the first time. Today my feet are nice and flat (but the skin is wrinkly from loosing so much weight). Last time, when my blood pressures were rising, I had noticed that my feet had started getting fatter again. This is one of those signs to look for. Weird. Other signs include heartburn and/or headache.

A Very Mag Mother's Day

Another update...
My blood pressures were climbing on Saturday and I began to get a headache. Finally, there seemed to be no improvement an hour after the bp meds, so I paged the doctor to let her know. She said, "back to the hospital". I entered the hospital Saturday around 11pm, and then they started me on a 24-hour round of magnesium sulfate around 2am (Sunday, Mother's Day). This period ended 2am last night (Monday). Blood pressure was stabilized and they sent me home by 9:15am this morning. They are keeping my bp med dose the exact same as I went in with, but have given me another prescription, just in case my blood pressure creeps up again. I can add this second med in if I need to. Today my head is still cloudy and I can't walk a straight line from the magnesium sulfate, but that will clear at some point tonight, I think. I am loosing a lot of the swelling (still waiting for 1 foot to go down in size!) and have lost about 25 lbs since coming home from the hospital the first time.

Georgyana is doing well. Her weight is starting to gain a bit. She had a bath yesterday, and she drank 8cc from a bottle (her feedings mostly come from gavage, but the nurses say she seems very eager to suckle). I was able to pump at the hospital for her and she has a nice size stockpile of breastmilk:)

One week update

My lil' girl is now 1 week old. She'll have 2 birthdates from now until she turns two: her due date (adjusted age) and her birthdate. Today she had a bath and was dressed in a cute pink flowered outfit that was several sizes too big for her. She is taking 18 cc of breastmilk/formula at each feeding. She handles the breastmilk very well, but about 2 cc of formula gets spit up when they supplement. My milk supply seems to be increasing, so hopefully she'll be 100% breastfed before too long. NICU's goal is to increase the amount of her feedings and get her gaining weight. Her weight is currently about 2lbs 10 oz and is the same from yesterday (so she doesn't seem to be loosing weight now). We're also doing skin-to-skin care (kangaroo care), which overall helps with breathing, weight gain, and everything else. Today she slept on my bare chest for awhile and she really relaxed. One of the first "baby items" that I need to invest in is some button-down shirts for me for skin-to-skin care. It's been 6 years since I needed button down shirts and for some reason, it is not something I currently have in my closet! Georgyana also had an ultrasound done of her head. I held her while the u.s. tech squeezed gel onto her head and moved the wand around. She slept through the whole thing, but kept making funny faces in her sleep during the procedure.

Pumping breastmilk

I know this is a detail NO ONE wants to read, LOL, but since it is now an all-consuming part of my life, I'm going to have to share it. Maybe it will help the lone pumper out there who is going through the same thing.

Day 1 & 2 when baby was born, I was put on Magnesium Sulfate, which is evil, evil stuff. I sat there in bed letting it eat away at my muscles. I kept asking the nurses and doctors about getting breastpumping initiated (I knew it was important!) but I just don't think it was possible.

Day 3, coming out of Mag Sulf took most of the day. Every time I looked, odd brown shaped cartoon characters followed my line of sight. Ok, that sounds really exaggerated, but it was true. I kept seeing brown monkeys. Which is better than with Z's birth, when I saw black demon faces. I'll take brown monkeys anyday! I started pumping around 11am ish, and got my 1st yield: about 10 ml combined from both breasts. I continued to try pumping, but no longer got anything. An LLC (Lactation Consultant) came whipping into my room talking about the Greatness of Breastmilk. She whipped out a fancy chart detailing all of the many times I should be pumping and how much I should get at each pump. She wrote a Big Number at the top of the chart, showing I was *supposed* to be getting this number at each pump. And she criticized me for not getting the pumping started sooner. She came in briskly, saying, "this is Day 4" (even though it was Day 3) and I felt very belittled by the whole event. I spent the rest of the day crying over the pump and getting...nothing...

Day 4. I decide I'm going to pump like there's no tomorrow even if NOTHING comes out EVER. And so I do. Starting the nighttime of Day 3, well into the daytime of Day 4, I'm spending every spare minute at the pump and educating all those who wander into my room of the simple joys of breastpumping. Well, actually, it's not really all that joyful. But I pretend...By evening, I'm finally seeing a few rare drops of liquid fall into the bottle. Plop............plop......
Another LLC came into my room this day, but she was so encouraging and helpful. What a difference! I know who to call on if I need help!

Day 5. Now I'm getting 5-10 ml per pump, which isn't much, and baby girl is actually consuming more than I can provide. But it's a start. I'm just going to take each drop as an extra blessing and keep working at it. And if you want to know what you can do to help - be my supporter and encourager! Yes, my lil baby is getting some formula, and yes I want so much to provide everything she needs! And yes, I desire to have one of those sweet suckling babes at the breast. But sometimes it doesn't go that way. I'll continue to pray, continue to hope, but just having a healthy baby (breastfed or otherwise) is ultimately my goal.

When can she come home?

Babies in NICU have to be able to do certain things before they can go home. Nowadays, there is no minimum weight requirement (thank goodness). Babies need to breath (although some may go home on oxygen). Babies need to hold their temperature like a newborn does (so when a baby can come out of it's special warmer bed and into a normal crib). She should be able to eat (breast, bottle) without stopping her breathing or significant drops in heartrate.

When the neonatologists think the baby might go home, they do a carseat test. Mom & Dad bring in their normal, non-special carseat. The baby sits in the carseat for length of a typical home from hospital trip. If baby struggles to pass this test, NICU will make some special suggestions as far as headgear & stuff.

The general rule of thumb is that baby will come home closer to her due date. They usually say this can happen 2 weeks earlier than due date. And in my past experience, lil' Z came home late Dec, but her due date was early Feb. She weighed between 3-3.5 lbs (she was 2lbs 9 oz at birth).

Tues, May 5th

My little girl is now 4 days old! NICU bathes the babies every 3 days, and she decided that she did not like to be bathed! After that, they placed her against my bare chest, with blankets over top of us both. I gave her the gavage feeding, and she snuggled down and went to sleep. Bath Day tends to tucker the babies out, so lil' Georgyana was sound asleep when I went to visit her later in the day.

More pictures from later in the day around 4pm on Friday. Dr. says she is pretty active and feisty. She is getting just a little bit of extra oxygen, but doing well for a tiny baby.

Baby Pictures

Baby was born on Friday morning. 2 lbs 14 ounces. We have a First Name - Georgyana - pronounced (Georgie - ahnah)

No middle name yet.