Day 7, and Jasmine did well getting the umbilical tube out over night. When I got in to her she was sleeping comfortably on her tummy, legs bent up looking like a wee froggy!! Because her tummy was a bit distended she had been given a suppository over night. I was amazed!! How on earth do you fit a suppository up a lttle dot like that?! a tic tac wouldnt even fit into it!! However they did it, it worked, she had a huge poo and mustve been feeling a lot more comfortable! They need to monitor these babies' tummies carefully. If they get too full, it becomes difficult for them to breathe.
The time had come for the all important weigh in. Now any baby is expected to lose a little weight in their first week, but Jazz went a bit too far for my liking!! She had lost 85g since her birth and had dropped from 526g to a tiny 440.3g!! I got really worried, she couldnt possibly afford to lose any more, that was a really scarey weight!! The neonatologists decided to increase her nutrient fluid intake in the hopes she'd begin gaining weight.
I was starting to get into a little routine, express, sit with jazz, coffee, cares, more expressing.
I was hoping that soon I could graduate from small amounts of milk in little sample pots to filling up bottles.
As I watched Jazz in her isolette, I was still amazed at how active she was. She spends so much time wriggling and squirming and almost looks as if shes trying to crawl! No wonder shes losing weight!! Too much exercise!
I stayed most of the day, as long as could, but had to go home to be there for Storm, Kai and Paige to get home from school. As I was on my own (Paul is a single parent also with 2 boys full time that he needs to be there for, he was able to stay a few nights in a row as his mum could watch them, but they need heir dad too), I couldnt go to see Jazz at night unless mum was there to look after the other kids, and quite frankly she was getting exhausted too!
But I called NICU at 9pm, I wanted to ring them more, but I know theyre busy and didnt want to be a nuisance.
Jazzies night nurse told me her B.P and urine output were a bit low, but with the extra fluid she was getting it should come up. Her monitor 'dots' were removed because her skin is so fragile that it was becoming a bit weepy. She still had the foot probe on though, which monitored her oxygen saturation and heart rate so they still knew what she was doing. Otherwise she was great. Shed spent the remainder of the day sleeping, probably still exhausted from her big day out the day before!!
The day after Jazz was born, I had bumped into one of the midwives who had looked after me on the ward. She told me she was working in special care, bay 3, and I asked if they had any big 24 weekers in there. She said they did have a big fella in there, so I asked if she could arrange a meeting with his mum. To see a 24 weeker that had survived and was big was a huge deal to me after all the negativity I had been bombarded with before Jazz was born. A few days later I was told I was allowed to see Archer, he was so big!! and so beautiful!! Just seeing him gave me so much hope! When I met his mum I was amazed, she seemed so young, yet so happy and confident, she and Arch were incredible (still are!!). Archer is still my hero today. Meeting him gave me more strength to hold onto all my positive thoughts, and to KNOW that Jazz would make it!
Its interesting that I sit here, 2 yrs later and finally blogging, re reading and copying the journals that I wrote in every day, but also remebering so many things that I hadnt put in my journal. One of those things, like my story above about Arch, was meeting the beautiful prem who lived in the isolette opposite Jazz, Ava.
Ava's mum, Bec, and I are still friends and we still have a giggle over our first meeting. It was in the first couple of days after Jazz was born. Ava had been born 4 weeks before jazz, at 25 weeks gestation. I came in one morning and saw Bec having lovely cuddles with Ava, I hoped I'd be able to do that soon too! I approached Bec cautiously (its drummed into us that we are not allowed to look at the other babies) and asked how old Ava was, it was amusing because Bec had been just telling someone that she thought Ava wasnt growing, yet to me she was enormous!!! Bec moved Ava so I could see her face, and whilst I thought she was beautiful, I also thought there was something seriously wrong with her nose!! It was all scrunched up and piggy looking! lol. I later found out that it was just the CPAP prongs pushing her nose up! When her cuddle ended and Ava was put back in the isolette, Bec let me have another look, I told her I couldnt get over how big Ava's feet were!! To any parent who's never seen a micro prem, those feet wouldve been confronting in their smallness, but to me they were surfboards!! Bec told me that she was there when Jazz came in and after the flurry of activity had died down and she snuck a look over, she initially thought there was nothing there!! Jazz was so small she couldnt be seen......until she started wildly waving her angry little arms and legs about!!
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