An uneventful day with baby...late start, quick call to the ICN staff to let them know that we were going to be late and do her care, then a wonderful hour and a half watching Amanda hold Clare, followed by an hour and a half for me. We didn't put her back until 11:30 AM to start her care. It was truly wonderful, even if I did doze off for a bit while I held her. Like daughter, like father, I guess.
We got word from the evening nurse that she has spiked to four pounds, eleven ounces. We were a little shocked--she isn't being fed right now, save for an electrolyte solution (Meg called it "baby Gatorade") and lipids introveneously. The previous evening nurse swears she weighed her three times, but five ounces in a day? We were worried. I guess I would be more so if they weren't constantly weighing diapers and taking blood tests from her.
She is such a dear. Preemies, lacking self-soothing behaviors that term babies have (like thumb-sucking) will cry and cry. If we weren't there all the time and familiar with their parents, we would feel sad that maybe that baby doesn't get visited and held a whole lot. Little Clare doesn't seem to do this a lot though. Way back in the first term of the pregnancy we bought this device called a "baby plus," which played a week's worth of the same rhythmic beats, that progressively and weekly got more complex. We did baby plus even when Amanda was in the hospital prior to Clare's birth, and we wonder if the wild snake oil claims made by the manufacturer weren't true? We both knew enough about instruction to surmise that there may be some truth to those claims, and it seemed fathomable, but she seems, well, quiet and able to calm herself down.
Maybe her parents should wear the baby plus around their heads for six months and see if it works on them.
She makes these little noises that makes her all the more adorable, this sort of sweet "unh!" and "ooo" noises as she drifts back to sleep in our arms. We can watch her make nursing motions with her mouth as she sleeps and dreams. Sometimes we try to put her pacifier in to work those latching muscles, but she usually doesn't take it when she's sleeping. She just dreams about it, we guess.
Sometimes I wish we didn't have data access to her constantly, like her heartbeat, respiration, and SpO2 pulsameter numbers. I think a lot of times it either makes us nervous as her O2 levels drop or respiration gets erratic, or the cyclist in me tries to "improve her performance" by holding her chest out away from mine to reduce the effect of her weight of resting on me, taking deep breaths (since preemies are supposed to mimic or reflect the parent in kangaroo care), and holding her as still as I can to reduce her heart rate. I wonder if it takes some of the enjoyment out of parenting, but then again, we aren't "normal parents" of a preemie.
God, in the future I hope we forget about all this preemie business. I'd hate for her to get stigmatized as something that we needn't do, as I want her to be as normal as we can possibly raise her (except having exceptional bicycle handling skills by the age of 6, of course).
She finishes her round of antibiotics tonight or tomorrow, I can't remember, but I do know the ICN will try to start her back on breast milk as of Wednesday. I guess that could be some sort of birthday present for Amanda.
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