Everyone Rides the Coaster

Everyone always likens the NICU experience to a roller coaster ride -- the only thing you can count on in the NICU is that there will be ups and downs and you never quite know when they're going to hit. The good news is that Molly is entirely off oxygen and breathing all on her own! They started her feeds at noon and she was gavage fed the first feed and took 10 ccs by bottle the second feed.

The bad news is that yesterday afternoon blood started coming back up her og tube and when they checked her aspirates there was some "coffee ground" blood present. Her abdomen was a little distended. The doctors had no idea where the blood was coming from -- they didn't know if maybe one of the tubes just scratched or irritated something or if there was some irregularity with her anatomy or if (God forbid) it's the beginning of a NEC issue. She's already on antibiotics and they ran some bloodwork -- happily, her x-ray and all her tests came back normal. While we were there last night, she did do her first (big) poop, so the doctors were happy to see that.

The doctors held her feeds until today so that they could get a better idea what was going on -- she was a good girl all night and all her vitals have remained stable. Since no new blood was coming up today and everything checked out fine, the doctors decided to restart her feeds today. So far, she is tolerating them with no problem and the doctors are fairly confident that the blood was either blood that she swallowed during delivery or was from some minor scratch or irritation from one of the tubes. We're praying that she continues to do well overnight and can return to the business of feeding and growing so that she can come home.

Mom did get to change Molly's diaper tonight and hold her for a while. The nurse let her try taking her dinner through a bottle nipple, rather than her feeding tube. She sucked it right down with only a little sputter at the end. After that, she was happy to fall fast asleep in Mom's arms. Since she was cleaned up a bit last night, we can now see that her hair appears to be the same color that Max's was -- a funny brownish/blondish/reddish color. She has the standard dark blue baby eyes right now, although she hasn't opened her eyes a whole lot yet. We had the nurse look up her Apgars and were happy to find out that she was 9 and 9! Max's were 5 and 8, which were pretty good for a 27 weeker.

I'm quickly discovering that after 13 weeks of bedrest, my body is not too happy about suddenly being thrown back into action. Between having a baby and all of the unaccustomed activity, I think every muscle in my body is sore. :P My feet barely were swollen at all while I was pregnant, but after a couple of days of walking around I've developed some serious cankles. It is awfully nice to be able to be up and about again. I stopped by Walgreens today to pick up some things and realized that that was the first shopping I'd done since I was put on bedrest. You would think I'd pick somewhere more exciting than Walgreens for my first shopping excursion, but I'm afraid necessity triumphed over entertainment. Hopefully soon I'll be doing some fun shopping for a coming home outfit. :)