Weight gain, back to work...

Here's what it looks like to work from home. At least this was what it looked like to work from home this morning... Olivia was resting very comfortably in the sling and I was able to get quite a good amount done, while simultaneously giving Suzanne the chance to do, well, anything besides look after Olivia...

But the news is: wait for it now... She was weighed again yesterday, and is now up to 6 pounds 6.6 ounces! I guess these stop being surprising to the general audience out there since you've heard these kinds of gains here before, but it never stops being good news. Dad tells me that I was in the 6 pound range when I was born. Coming up on her due date, it'll be interesting to see what her "birth" weight ends up as!

Anyway, short post (and sorry for the lack of posts...) since I'm now back at work temporarily. More paternity leave awaits though, and some holiday time over Christmas. That takes the edge off of going back to work...

Baby in a basket

Olivia seems happy in her Moses basket. Today was my first day back in the office since Suzanne and Olivia have been home, and it's really handy for Suzanne to have the basket; Olivia can be sleeping almost anywhere Suzanne needs to be, and needn't be disturbed to move from one room to the next (not that we really have more than one room, but the idea is the same...).

And as I type this, we're trying her out in that humongous cotton nappy! See November 16 for a picture (although she _is_ bigger now). Yes, it does look a little funny, and no, her outfit doesn't really fit over it, but she had some skin irritation from the disposable she had been wearing, and we wanted to give her a break. So we'll see how it goes! It's likely that she really won't fit into them for a little while, but who knows, maybe we can make them work...

5 Weeks!

Olivia at 5 weeks, with that same duck. It's not so easy to see her growth from photo to photo, but you can definitely see the changes in her face for example, with the pudgy cheeks she's got now compared to the way she looked at 1 week!


Resting comfortably togther in the morning. Right now we're putting the house back into "normal" configuration (that would be optimized for one couple with one baby, as opposed to two couples with two babies, as we has for the last week or so). The thanksgiving dishes are all washed, turkey sandwiches eaten, and we're working down the pile of leftovers, savoring particularly the garnet yams! Hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving, as we did. Not to wax too philosphical, but we have a great deal to be thankful for.

A happy thanksgiving, with WEIGHT GAIN as the theme!

The aftermath of thanksgiving dinner- it was all just too much to take a picture before the meal, by the time we got it all together and assembled, babies and all, we needed to _eat_! We had a great thanksgiving dinner, with Turkey and all the traditional Steffens trimmings. Suzanne was executive chef (in theory, but in practice she also did everything else in addition to the planning) and put together the full deal, around the needs of a 4-week old, which is nothing short of miraculous. All in attendance were duly impressed. Speaking of which, it's (L-R) Betsey and William, Michael, Joanne (our neighbor), and Suzanne and Olivia.


Here, Olivia demonstrates the proper ettiquite post thanksgiving meal, showing the full food-coma, as Dad tries to achieve the same state with pie (and fantastic pie at that!!!)

But the real news here is not about our respective weight gain over the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but Olivia's very impressive gain over the last week; The community Neonatal Nurse stopped by today and weighed Olivia at 6 pounds 1 1/2 ounces! She's truly a Brick House baby. All of a sudden she feels heavier in our arms... For those of you who are statistically inclined, she gained about 1 1/2 ounces per day from the last weighing to this one- normal weight gain in this stage is about 1 ounce. Only half an ounce better, you say- but it's 150% of the norm! We expect that come her due date in december, she'll have outgrown her preemie clothes and be in standard newborn clothes!

Ok, enough enthusing about weight gain for this post- time to get back to the aftermath of thanksgiving- it's very cold and we're getting snow flurries! Makes me think of holiday walks in the woods through the snow. Not that any of this snow will stay very long, but it's very holiday-like.

getting ready for Turkeyday...

Suzanne and Olivia bundled up for a walk- one of the great things we get to do with the little girl. She seems to love the slings! This morning again, we went for an extended walk while she dozed (and mom dozed too!).

Today we're getting ready for Thanksgiving. We've found most of the ingredients for the traditional meal, and we're getting started with pies and things this afternoon. Short post today, since I'm busy just trying to keep the house in order!

Bonus picture for the day- Olivia in the absolutely cute hat and booties from our friend Jenn in the far reaches of Alaska- thanks Jenn!

4 weeks old, and a real outing!

Olivia at 4 weeks, with the ubiquitous duck for scale. She really is growing; her features are definitely bigger. She still mostly sleeps and eats; she needs to conserve her energy for growing!

So today (well, yesterday actually- sorry for not posting yesterday but it was just a busy day!), aside from being Olivia's one-month birthday, was her first outing beyond short walks from the house. Betsey and Michael and William are here and one of the objectives of thier visit to England was to experience English pubs, so we took an evening stroll to the nearby village of Grantchester, about a 20-30 minute walk, and visited the Green Man, one of the village pubs there. It was quite cold and so we all bundled up, and it was also rather foggy:

Here are Betsey, Michael, Suzanne, William, and Olivia on the walk to Grantchester. You can see the low-level fog quite well; I guess I should have turned off the flash.

The fog was only down low, however, and we were treated to some beautiful views of the English countryside and a very nice sunset:

After a pint at the Green Man, the Chauffuer (that would be me) walked back to get the car and brought the whole gang home to warm soup and another cozy evening (wish we had a fireplace!).

Olivia meets cousin William!

First picture of the cousins together- Bob (dad) and Betsey (mom) and Olivia (the little one) and William (the giant one)!

So, Betsey, Michael, and William arrived today- wahoo! We've got family visiting for Thanksgiving this week, which is great. Olivia is still doing well, and we're thinking of going up to the next size of nappy! Things might start to get small on her, which will be great! It's wild to look at William (21 lbs) and think that Olivia (currently 5 lbs 5 ounces) will get to that size, maybe in the next 6 or 7 months. I mean, he's huge! But we have noticed Olivia getting bigger, which is interesting- the changes are subtle but when we pay attention we can tell.

Well, short post today so that I can get back to our guests!

The incredible growing girl

Olivia happily asleep in the sling. This is the first of several anticipated sling carriers, and she seems to like it just fine! This particular model is the original Freedom Sling by Freedom Slings, a home-based business run by Margaret in Scotland- you can get her products on ebay. The great thing about it is that since she really likes to be held and carried, we can do that and still have both hands free to, say, type a blog entry, as I'm doing now with her snuggled close to me in the sling. Other great things we can do include picking up the house (or at least stuff strewn around the house), dishes, laundry, not to mention the perhaps obvious walks. This morning I took her on a nice long walk to give Suzanne an extra hour of much-needed sleep (she later said it had felt like just 5 minutes), and she dozed away peacefully in the sling under my jacket. A cold, clear morning, with some sun- quite nice!

But I digress again. The main big news of this post is that Olivia is a monster that is growing so fast she will probably take over the world! the Community Neonatal team came by again this morning and weighed her, and she's now 2.4 kilos, or about 5 pounds 5 ounces! This means that over the past three days, she's gained 60 grams per day, all via breastfeeding. So she (and Suzanne) must be doing something right! In spite of all the milk she seems to spit up (sometimes alarmingly through her nose!), plenty seems to be getting in for her to grow on. She's gaining even faster than when she had the tube in!

So, chalk up another one for mother nature and motherhood!

One size fits all?

Olivia in the great mother-ease washable cotton nappy "birth-to-potty-training" system. It has many snaps and folds to make it fit "all" sizes from birth to a rather large baby, but somehow I suspect they didn't have 32-week babies in mind when they said "birth", so we're fattening her up just as fast as we can so we can make use of this great invention.

Not much to tell about today, except that we're very excited because Betsey, Michael, and Olivia's cousin William have arived in England and will be coming to Cambridge sometime later this week or next. Olivia's first cousin visit! William's about 6 months old now, and something like 5 times her size (Weight-wise anyway...).

Oh, one more milestone! I officially went down to the "Shire hall" and registered Olivia's birth. It's funny, but it seemed a bit wild to be recording the kinds of details that later geneaologists might be looking up. I thought of some of the geneaology research that has been done in the family, which incidentally gave rise to Olivia's middle name "Oaksford". They are a branch of Suzanne's family, the link to which was found by Grandma Barb, leading us to meet the Mills, Suzanne's fourth cousins, who live south of London. Roger (Mills) also researches geneaology, and has given us a (rather large) family tree showing, though the Oaksfords, his relationship to Suzanne. It's all fascinating.

But that was a (long, sorry) digression on the fact that Olivia now has a birth certificate. And I signed it in "registrar's ink" which apparently does not fade with time and can be chemically proven to be genuine. Pretty wild.

A whole day with no tube...

Here's Olivia dressed up for a little walk we took today (isn't it amazing that she can go for a walk while sound asleep?). Featured are the nice coat from Aunt Betty and Uncle Jim, and the perfectly-sized hat from Grandma Barb. It's tough to find hats the right size, and Barb knitted 2 great custom fit little hats for her.

So the tube has been gone for a whole day - and it's been great! You remember a couple of posts ago when I detailed all that needed to be done to give her a feeding via the tube? Well, we don't need to do that anymore... As long as she continues to feed well, which all indications are that she sure is (given the output, the input must be quite a lot if you know what I mean). We're still carefully watching how much time she spends eating, and since she's still so little we wake her up if she goes too long without having a meal, since she might not wake herself and if she goes too long she won't have energy to feed. So we still aren't to the point of the "normal" baby regime (not sure what that would be anyway- is there a "normal"?), but it's great to be making good progress. The real proof of things will come Thursday when Jeanette will come back and weigh her. We'll be excited to hear the results of that. With any luck whe'll have broken the 5-pound mark, although she's still too small for many of the clothes labeled "up to 3 pounds". Whatever. Well, stay tuned for another weight report in the next couple of days!

First family visitor, 3 weeks old, and OFF THE TUBE!!!

Kathy Coit, Olivia's first cousin twice removed, sits with Olivia nd Suzanne on a short visit from France- it was great to catch up! She was one of several visitors we had at the house today.

But there's some incredible news. The second of the visitors was Jeanette, from the Community Neonatal team, to check on how Olivia was doing. They weighed her, and she is now a massive 4 pounds 14 ounces, over a pound above her birth weight. Once again, Jeanette said "whatever it is you're doing, keep doing it!". We showed her our logbook of how Olivia's been feeding the last couple of days, which has been almost 100% breastfeeding, with only a few milliliters down the tube. She decided it might be time to remove the tube, and did! It's still possible that when Jeanette visits again Olivia won't have put on enough weight through breastfeeding alone and will need the tube again, but we're very hopeful that it won't be needed again.

This is a huge step forward for us all, as well as a great reduction in the complexity of taking care of Olivia. It's a bit challenging, since if she doesn't feed well we don't have the "safety net" of the tube, but the reality is now that if she wasn't getting what she needed it would be evident over a matter of days, not minutes or hours, and so there would be time to have a new tube put in if it were _really_ needed.

We also had the "Health Visitor" stop by today and sort of gave us a briefing on what she does. And what she does is look after kids health from birth to age 16, working with the parents, the General Practitioner, and any specialists to keep kids healthy. This seems like yet another cool thing the NHS does- 0unce of prevention and all that.


Anyway, we missed the 3-week picture of Olivia by 2 days, but here it is. Perhaps obviously this was taken before the tube was taken out; we'll get a good picture of her sans tube for next time!

Still here!

Whoops! Missed a day. Between feeding, changing, etc, and getting to spend some time with Tina and Steve, yesterday's post just fell out. But things are going along quite well, in fact. Olivia's breastfeeding continues to improve, and we've only given her food via the tube once in the last 24 hours. really nice- maybe soon the tube can come out!

For those of you who are wondering, here's what's involved in a "Tube feeding": (feel free to skip this if you don't want the gory details, but I think it's rather interesting!)

1. "Aspirate" her tube. This means drawing a little bit of her stomach contents and testing the PH. If the ph is wrong, the tube could be in the wrong place, like, say, her lungs. It would be bad to put milk there.
   
2. Change her. This gives her a chance to wake up and see if she's up for breastfeeding, so we might be able to avoid the tube. We don't want to be too enthusiastic, though, because we don't want to tire her out. It's a balance.
   
3. If she's wakeful and "rooting" (signaling that she's ready to breastfeed), try her at that. Assuming she doesn't get a "full feed" (defined in this case to be 10 minutes breastfeeding), move to the next step.
   
4. Sterilize a 20 ml syringe and a small bottle.
   
5. Measure out 36 ml refrigerated expressed breast milk (EBM) into the bottle.
   
6. Warm up the bottle in a cup of warm water.
   
7. Draw the EBM into the syringe, and pull the plunger just past the stop at the end (being careful not to pull it all the way out and dump the contents of the syringe).
   
8. Connect the syringe to the tube.
   
9. Remove the plunger and let gravity flow the EBM into Olivia's tummy. Sometimes the flow will stop so one has to "help" it along by replacing the plunger and giving a little push.
   
10. Wait. Gravity feed can take 10-15 minutes. Hold the syringe above Olivia, but not too high (creates too high flow rate and she spits it up).
    
11. When the syringe is empty, remove it from the tube and recap the tube.
    
12. Express the breast milk that she would have drawn out herself and refrigerate it for later.
    
13. Burp her and clean everything up.
    

This seems to take a long time. We're really happy she's taking to breastfeeding so well. She rarely needs the full 36 ml any more. The system is, if she doensn't breastfeed at all, give her 36 ml. If she breastfeeds fro less than 10 min, give her half, 18 ml. If she breastfeeds for longer than 10 min, she doesn't need any additional "top-up", which is the goal. Over the last day or so, she's been in the latter category most of the time, which is great. We're hopeful that in the next few days she'll progress to all breastfeeding, which will mean the tube can come out! Ok, that's a lot to digest (no pun intended) for one post, so I'll leave it there.

More relaxed

Here at home, we can relax much more while Olivia sleeps. Of course there's more to do with giving her some food via tube than there would normally be with a newborn, and of course she's on her own schedule, but we can work around her schedule much better than at the hospital. Including, as shown here, getting a little reading in!

We're still working on breastfeeding. Or was that beastfeeding? Sometimes I miss the typos I make... fortunately there are editors in the blogosphere audience. From an email from Ed (Waddington, my thesis advisor and proofreader extraordinaire):

"I am a bit puzzled though, about "beastfeeding" (October 27) [I've gone back and corrected it -bob]. Isn't it a bit early to turn Olivia into a ravenous carnivore? And where do you find the beasts? Does Olivia have to catch her own? Is she quick enough on her feet for a successful hunt?"

Actually, she is rather quick on her feet. She would normally catch her own but being born a little early means she needs a little assistance with the hunt. She can get small beasts by herself, but in order to grow to her potential she needs some larger, more fierce beasts as well. So we take these ones out ourselves and feed them to her via the tube.

We had another home visit today, this one from the community midwife and a student midwife. It's really nice to have so much support at home when we arrive with a new baby. Next visit is the "Health Visitor" although we're not sure exactly what this is (I suppose if we'd been brought up British we'd simply _know_).

And Tina and Steve will be back this evening, Kathy Coit Monday, and Betsey, Michael, and Olivia's cousin William will be arriving sometime next week. Loads of visitors- wahoo!

An evening walk

Little Olivia nestled snugly in a kangaroo pouch ready to go for a little walk. This is the first time Suzanne or Olivia had left the house since we'd gotten back from the hospital. We made it a short walk, to make sure we didn't get Olivia cold at all. I don't think it was a problem. We made sure not to wear hats or anything ourselves, so that if we got cold at all we'd konw it was too cold for her. She seemed to like it, and showed her appreciation for the motion of walking by passing out. Or maybe it was the "milk coma" from having been fed shortly before we went out...

Anyway, our second day home. And our second night! We're still working out our system to do things efficiently, but we seem to be doing the right thing for Olivia; the Community Neunatal Nurse visited us today and weighed her, checked her feeding and answered our questions- she is now up to 4 pounds 10 ounces! So she's gaining as fast as they could possibly expect. The nurse actually said "whatever you're doing, keep doing it because you've got it right!". So that was great to hear. Our friends Tina and Steve will come back from Devon tomorrow or the next day, and have been planning to stay with us; we'll see if they mind hearing us get up every 3 hours and potter around for an hour... And in other news, Olivia's first cousin twice removed will be visiting us from France early next week, the first in a parade of family visitors who we're excited to have. Nice to be home!

Made it through the first night...

Well, we made it through the first night unassisted! Really it's like having a regular baby at home for the first time I suppose, other than the issues associated with tube feeding. Not a _lot_ of sleep, but I still feel like we can do this parenthood thing...

But before we get too far into doing it ourselves and get absorbed with having her at home, I want to take a moment to thank all of the great staff at the Rosie Maternity Hospital, and specifically the folks who've been helping us in NICU, SCBU, and Sara Ward. The 6 to the left are only a handfull ofthe total cast; it would be impossible to name and thank everyone. We did, however, manage to get pictures of Olivia with (top to bottom): Lisa and Karen (SCBU), Allison and Suzanne (Sara Ward), and Sabrina and Clare (SCBU). Thank you guys so much for all your help getting us on our feet as parents of a tiny baby, and teaching us how to care for her and understand the issues associated with a 32 week baby. It's been a steep learning curve for us but we've had some of the best teachers to be had anywhere.

And just a note for our international audience; make this a hearty endorsement for nationalized healthcare. I don't want to turn this blog political, but under the NHS (UK's National Health Service) we've received top-notch care from people who are great at what they do and very friendly to boot. Comparing stories with folks in other countries, it seems that the style of care we've gotten here is very progressive as well. When Olivia was in Intensive care and SCBU we were allowed to visit her any time of day, 24/7, and got great advice and encouragement about getting a start breastfeeding under the challenging conditions of having your baby plugged into a wall and not strong enough to feed herself. In short, it's been all we could have asked for (had we known what to ask for!).

And, we haven't had a penny out of pocket during this whole exercise. We pay our taxes and that's it. We came rushing into the hospital in premature labor, and the first questions were about the medical situation, not what insurance provider we had. And anybody in our situation, regardless of socioeconomic background, would be able to get the same care. And that is nothing short of fantastic.

And it's not stopped since we got out of the hospital- this morning we received 2 phone calls, one from the community neonatal team aksing if we had any concerns (they're planning to visit us tomorrow), and one from the community midwife, who offered to visit us today if we felt the need; we feel pretty good about things so far so she'll come out on Friday. Essentially we've got really good support at home too. As I understand it, even parents of full-term babies get support at home from the community midwives (we've got the neonatal tema as well).

Ok, end of my soliloquy on our great experience of the NHS. More next time on how it is to be home with Olivia, although many of the parents out there will already know pretty much what we're doing...

We're Home!

A very happy and proud mom at home with Olivia!

We made it home today. After taking a baby CPR class, and getting a bagfull of syringes and bottles for feeding (via the tube), and a talk from the community neonatal team, we were ready to go. Of course then there was lots of paperwork to clear away for her to get discharged, and packing everything that I've brought to Suzanne over the last 2 1/2 weeks- turned out I brought a lot of stuff over that time! Finally we were ready to go and put her in her car seat for the first time- it fits her like a bathtub, but the staff said she was safely strapped in. We said our farewells to Cameron's mom (who was on Sara Ward with us and also going home today), Benjamin and Anna's moms (neighbors on SCBU- still there but improving), and Edward and Josh's mom (twins on SCBU with us and also going home), and the fantastic crew at Sara Ward and SCBU.

To make a long story short (a short drive, really), we're home now. We've gotten through the first nappy change and the first feeding, and have yet to go through the first night, so we're feeling good!

Ok, well, Olivia's on my lap right now and so I'm leaning at an awkward angle to type this, so I'll go for now. But this won't be the end of the road for the blog, we'll be continuing to post; this is just the next chapter...

Oh, right- I almost forgot: She was weighed again just before beign discharged from the hospital; and she's gaining still- another 2 ounces, making her 4 pounds 7; she's gained over half a pound since birth!

Great News! Big News! Great Big News!!!

Hey all-- Sorry no photo for this post but I'm sure there will be a photo-op or two later today because SHE'S COMING HOME!!

I'm not normally an all-caps kind of guy but in this instance it's really the only way for me to put it. Yesterday they came around and gave her a clean bill of health, as it were, and we could have come home yesterday except we were so unprepared! We've got lots of baby clothes, but virtually nothing that's sized for a 4 pound baby (and even some of the under-4 lb stuff out there still fits her like a tent), so we needed to go shopping so we didn't have to bring home a naked baby. She'd have been cold in the car seat! After a whirlwind of shopping we had the essentials we needed (although even so-called "baby" stores had basically nothing for premature babies- what's up with that?).

It's always been inspiring to see a car seat come into the ward. It means a baby is going home. Today, we'll get to bring our own in and soon we'll be together at home.

She'll still have the tube in, and we'll still have to "top her up" from time to time, but the staff at the hospital has decided that since we do almost all of her care anyway, we might as well do it from the comfort of our own home. The Community Neonatal team will come by and check in on us every other day or so, to check that she's doing well and help us strategize getting her off the tube.

Ok, all for the moment, I've been on too many airplanes that didn't land where they were supposed to, or didn't take off, or turned around, to be absolutely sure of anything so I'd better not jinx it. I'll go for now, and I'll post again once she's safely here at the house.

Proof of Paternity?

Coincidence? Maybe not. I'm not sure if this would be accepted in court as proof of paternity, but it seems pretty clear-cut to me... Same cowlick. Hope she doesn't get my beard!

Olivia's getting better at breastfeeding, and yesterday she got to spend a few hours with no tube in her nose when she pulled it out just before a feeding. The way you can tell the tube is in her stomach is to test the ph of whatever you can draw out of the tube. If it's 5 or lower, you're in the right place, but if it's 6 or above, the tube might be in her lungs, which of course would be bad if you tried to put some milk down the tube. So we test this every time we feed her just to make sure the tube hasn't moved since the last time. Thing is, if she's just had a big meal of breastmilk, her stomach hasn't had the time to change the ph of the contents, and there's some ambiguity about where the tube is.

All of that was a long way to explain that we (us and the nursing staff) decided that since she was due to be fed, we didn't want to agitate her too much by putting a new tube in (she really doesn't like it and I'm not surprised). So the 'pressure' was on to have her get a good meal by breast alone. And she did beautifully! It's almost as though she realized that the alternative was to have that tube stuck in her nose again and really gave it a full effort.

Of course, since she's so small still the tube had to go back in eventually. It was a little tempting to say "well, maybe she doens't need it anymore?", but she needs lots of milk for growing.

And she gained another ounce- she's up to 4 pounds 5 ounces! nice. Ok, off for now...

2 weeks old, attempt number 5 at posting...

Olivia and Mom at 2 weeks. I just finished writing a rather long post about breastfeeding and such, and then blogger.com managed to lose it with no backups. Kind of irritating. Now I'd like to recapture what I was going to say, but I probably won't be able to... I need to make my own backups I suppose. Argh.

Anyway, one of the things I was going to say was that the pic of Olivia with the Duck, astute readers may notice, is a repeat pose of a picutre we posted exactly a week ago. Yup, we're making a weekly picture of it (similar to what we did with Suzanne's belly - see our flickr page for those) to watch how she grows.

And she really is growing. Her breastfeeding is getting stronger and we're hoping that she'll be strong enough to come home in the next week or so. Of course it all depends on her so we'll just be watching closely and fattening her up as much as we can.

Ok, well, I apologise for all the stuff I wrote earlier and then didn't recapture in this post. Gotta run as usual...

First outing, weight gain, progress, progress!

Olivia went outside for the first time yesterday! Our friends Tina and Steve came by in the morning and we borrowed a pram from the hospital and went for a walk! This was one way of circumventing the visting hours policy- we can always go out to see visitors even if they can't come in!

So it was a nice, if short, walk out to the field next to the hospital. It was really windy so we came back in pretty quickly, not wanting Olivia to cool off too much. Short outing, but an outing nonetheless.

I have had a couple of emails about her weight gain and how impressive it's been. Dad mentioned that if she keeps this rate up she'll weigh several tons by the time she's 20! I just did the calculation based on her current rate and she'll actually be a svelte 456.25 pounds- now that would be impressive... but hold on to your hat, because in the last 2 days she's gained another 2 ounces, tipping the scales at 4 pounds 4 ounces yesterday. That's what we like to see.

She's continuing to get better at breastfeeding too, and we're feeding her less through the tube, which is all good.

And as a final developmental note, her umbilicus fell off yesterday!

Hooking up the mp3 player...

Well, not really. this is actually the standard newborn hearing screening test. They have a couple of electrodes also attached to her head and play a few clicks in the little headphones, and measure how the impulses travel. So she doesn't need to raise her hand in response or anything (although she's pretty good at raising her hand!). The verdict- her hearing's fine!

Yesterday she did pretty well. Our frinds Tina and Steve arrived from Seattle (the original plan was for them to see us pregnant), so we left her for a few hours and Suzanne came out of the hospital and came home for the first time since Olivia was born. We had a nice dinner and then went back to the hospital, to discover she'd pulled her tube out again. And as I was changing her nappy and Suzanne was talking to her, I looked up to see her little fist wrapped around the tube again, and Suzanne trying to keep her from pulling it out. It's not fun to watch her get a new tube, as I'm sure it's not fun to get a tube stuck up through your nose and down into your stomache... We decided to try giving her a good breastfeed and see how that went. It was really nice to have the tube out and see her face without it. She fed really well, and since you can't put a tube in just after she's breastfed, we decided to see if she'd got enough. She wanted more an hour later, but then went right to sleep; so I think a pretty good success breastfeeding-wise. I had to go before she woke again (1 am was the next 'scheduled' feeding but if she woke up hungry we'd feed her), so I hope it all went well through the night. Now I'm off to see how it went!

Getting stronger

Short post today as I want to try to make it in to the hospital to help with the 9 am "servicing". With any luck I'll post another time about what all that entails. But to yesterday's progress...

She's definitely getting stronger and more in touch with the idea of breastfeeding, which is great. As an example, we usually feed her 34 ml of expressed breast milk (EBM) thorugh the tube if she doesn't have a go at the breast. So that's enough for her to get a full tummy and keep growing (weighed in yesterday at 4 pounds 2 ounces- they actually do use kilos, but we convert it to units we can relate to babies we've known...). In one feeding yesterday, she had a good strong breastfeeding session, but to keep the right amount of food going into her we still gave her 17 ml (half order) of EBM though the tube, and boy did that make her full! quite literally full to the gills. So that means she got 17 ml (or so) all by herself, which is great. She's getting stronger by the day. Once she can get an entire feeding without using the tube, and can do that twice a day (it _is_ tiring for her), we might ge able to bring her home and continue her care with a community health team. She'd still have the tube in, but we'd be in our own surroundings which might be nice.

ok, all for now, running to the hospital!

Big Day!

Yesterday Olivia was formally discharged from SCBU and came in to the ward with Suzanne. I tink this is the first picture with all 3 of us in it; Suzanne's hand is on Olivia, who is in the sort of plastic tub which is her bed in hospital. quite a big day for her as a baby and for us as parents, as we'll be more and more responsible for her care now. So its exciting and scary at the same time. Here's an excerpt of an email Suzanne sent which gives a good idea (also helps me type less so I can get off to the hospital and help out!):

Hi All,

Well, Bob and I are just waiting around for the big event right now. When they finish the paperwork or whatever it is they're doing, Olivia will be coming in with us, by my bed. As usual, though, it always takes longer than expected and we're just waiting around a little impatiently. I'm trying to rest, and Bob is trying to set up the phone service by my bedside since we expect I'll be here alot more than before with Olivia staying here. I'm a bit nervous. I was a teary wreck this morning anticipating sleepless nights and having to do it all myself (since Bob won't be here), but it sounds as though the support should actually be quite good. They don't want me to become a wreck any more than I do. It sounds like a whole team of people will descend on me once Olivia is in here. It sounds like they expect us to be in here for up to another couple of weeks, anyway. sigh. and she'll almost certainly still have a feeding tube when we go home. sigh.

She's here! She just arrived. and she's sound asleep. Of course, that's pretty much what she does anyway between 'feeds' - which is good, her energy should go in to making her grow at this point, not to showing off her pretty eyes.
Now that she's safely here, Bob has just ridden off to buy me a hand pump for expressing. Today, the midwife really recommended I give it a try. Maybe I'll try it and be perfectly content with it, so I'll give it a go. If nothing else, it may save alot of time.

I really hope tonight goes well. Apparently, the 'girls' (midwives or nurses) take one of the night feedings, so that I can have a 6 hour block of time to try to sleep.

After her first bath the other day, I noticed that she has Bob's cowlick. It's on the same side and everything :) Her hair mostly looks straight, but at times seems a little wavy. I heard a midwife saying that if your baby has dark eyebrows and dark hair the hair will probably stay dark, but if the eyebrows and lashes are light (as hers are) all the dark hair may fall out and be replaced by blonde. We'll see!

Going wireless!

Suzanne at her bed on Sara Ward with the flowers and cards we've gotten. In fact, not even all the flowers would fit in the photo! Thanks to everyone- it makes the space much brighter.

Yesterday Olivia made what I think is a huge step (we'd been anticipating it, so not a surprise, but it feels really good all the same): She's off the monitors! No more little machine that goes "ping" when we pick her up and move the sensor, no more baby attached to the wall by wires, no being careful not to pull on the wires, and no more wires to sort out during nappy changes! This feels like such a big step because it is the wires that, literally and figuratively, connected her to the hospital. She still has the nasogastric tube, and will probably for some time yet, but that's something we can deal with, and will come out in time.

She was also weighed yesterday, and she's growing fast! 4 pounds 1 ounce, so back up above her birth weight! As a result, since her feeds are calculated by weight, her feedings were upped by 2 ml to 34 ml every 3 hours. Sometime, see if you can find something that measures out 30 ml, and think of the size of Olivia, and imagine putting that volume inside her little tummy. It's really quite amazing that she can absorb such a lot!

But I've left the best news for last; we anticipate (hope hope hope) that Olivia will be able to leave SCBU and graduate to Sara Ward today! This means that she will stay by Suzanne's bed and we can be with her all the time- we're excited about that! Tune in tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-channel, for pictures of her graduation ceremony. Speaking of which, I'd better stop writing about it and get over there so I don't miss it.