Our NICU Stay

Last time I wrote about Amelia’s birth story and today I am going to write about the aftermath of her birth.

Amelia was born in the afternoon, and when she was born she was quite big for her being 3 weeks early, 7lbs 5 oz is the size of a full term baby usually. They checked her glucose and it was 20 then they fed her an oz of formula and re-checked it and it was still only 23 so they told us if they came back in a half hour and it was still low they would have to take her to the NICU. They came back in a half hour and it was 21 so away she went to the NICU. I didn’t get to go with her then because I still had my epidural and it was taking quite a while to wear off.  After about another hour or so I was able to go and see her in a wheel chair because I was still a bit wobbly.

We checked into the NICU and washed up and they took us back to see her. We found out on top of her having a low glucose that she also had a high bilirubin and then she also had polycythemia (which the proportion of blood volume that is occupied by red blood cells increases) They were talking about doing a reverse transfusion, and stuff and everyone decided that they would just put a line in her umbilical cord (because they couldn’t get an IV in her) and give her fluids and recheck her and then go from there. When they rechecked her, her count had gone down so they didn’t have to do the reverse transfusion.

Through her umbilical they were also giving her stuff to keep her sugars up and help stabilize them. Once they were stable they were going to start to wean her off of the meds. It took two days for her to stabilize and then it took another day or two til she was fully weaned off the meds. But because of all of this that was happening she was so tired that she was sleeping a lot and wasn’t eating so she was dropping weight pretty significantly. So they ended up putting and NG tube down her nose to do her feedings through.

The NG tube was horrible to watch being put in, just because I am in the medical field does not mean that I am okay with stuff like this being done to my daughter. It was horrible because they couldn’t get it down the left side so they had to try down the right side. She just cried and cried the whole time I felt so bad for her.

With the NG tube, we would try to breast feed then we would try to bottle feed and then we would put the rest through her NG tube. And while it was going in her NG tube I would pump and they would store all the breast milk in their fridge for the night time when I wouldn’t go over and feed her.

We were lucky enough that Casey was able to make it to the birth this time, he had training and it finished Saturday and I had Amelia the next Tuesday. And he was able to stay for about a week. We were super lucky and they housed us at the Ronald Mcdonald house which is like a block away. It was a life saver! Seriously if you ever want to donate money to a good cause (or products) it is a fabulous place that could use any help they can get, some families stay there for months. I ended up staying for 18 days. My normal day schedule looked a little like this, it was exhausting!

·         745am- leave for 800am feeding, drive over and go upstairs taking all the milk I had pumped during the night and all my pumping supplies

·         750am- sign in to NICU and wash hands for 5 minutes

·         800am-change Amelia’s diaper, check her temp, weigh her diaper, and then weigh her.

·         From 0800 to 0820 try breast feeding her

·         820-835 try bottle feeding her

·         835-925 put rest of her feeding in her NG tube and I pump

·         925-945 cuddle with her and burp her (when her umbilical line was removed)

·         945-955 pack up my stuff label milk I just pumped, wash pump parts and head to the parking garage

·         1020 Arrive at Ronald McDonald house again

·         1050 head back over to do it all again.

We had feedings every 3 hours 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm, 11pm and then at night they told me I should stay and rest and just come in the morning. I did skip a feeding here and there that just to keep my sanity and I went to my good friend Elise’s house which was close and it was nice to just relax and have some adult time and sometimes I even fell asleep there.

We were in the NICU for 18 days and it was nice to be able to go back to my parents and I stayed there for another 2 weeks before I went back home to Washington.