First off, a huge apology to those who have been depending on my blog for updates about Sydney. I have shamefully neglected you all.
But I have good news!
No, she's not home yet. Boooo.
When I went in last night to breastfeed her she took 50ml!
NEW RECORD!
Here she is after a particularly good feed (48 ml, I think) and an impressively large poop.
She's doing really well.
She's at 38 weeks gestation, and babies usually go home between 36 and 37 weeks.
So she really likes the cushy NICU. Especially since she's in a cute 'lil' crib now!
But despite the longer stay, she's eating so well. And breastfeeding was on the top of my list of worries, so the fact that she's a rockstar eater puts me completely at ease.
As of yesterday she weighs 6 lbs 4.5 oz!
She's chunking right up, lemme tell ya!
It looks like we have another thumb sucker on our hands!
Her feeding tube is out, and she is now on an ad-lib feeding schedule (as opposed to being fed every three hours.) That means that she eats what she will, when she will. There are parameters to determine about how long she should sleep between feedings, depending on how much she takes. She breastfeeds a lot better now that she's on this new schedule! She wakes up herself, so she's a lot more alert which leads to higher volumes taken in less time.
All that really stands in her way at this point is her oxygen needs. She caught a very mild cold (turns out my allergies weren't just extra bad those days, I guess) and it's kept her from progressing the last week or so. They had moved her down to a low-flow cannula and she was doing well, but because of all the nose-suctioning they were having to do, her nose was bleeding. So they moved her back up to the high-flow so she would be getting humidified air to help her nose get better faster.
She has been on room air (no extra oxygen) since this morning at 1 liter of pressure. She'll probably be put back on the low-flow cannula tomorrow and they'll try and decrease the flow little by little until she's off. She's made huge progress since yesterday, so maybe she's decided the NICU isn't so cushy after all!
I've got my fingers crossed that she'll be home in 1-2 weeks! I can't believe how close she is! Thank you all for your prayers on her behalf!
