One Week Old!

I wanted to write a quick update since it feels like we have fallen off the blog bandwagon.  It’s a lot easier to just do facebook/twitter updates from my phone since we are so busy being up at the hospital and getting ready for our move.  But I don’t want to keep you guys in the dark by just doing 140 character updates!

Aliza is one week old today.  I can’t believe that.  It has gone by in a blur for sure.  She is doing well.  She sleeps a whole lot.  She tends to wake up before feedings cause she gets fussy sometimes when she is hungry.  Otherwise she is an angel who just sleeps and makes cute faces.  She cracks us up! When she is trying to wake up and is having a hard time with it, she lifts her eyebrows really high as if that will help her eyes to open.  It is adorable.

As for her health, she is now moved to the level 2 NICU.  She got moved there on Monday night because she has been breathing on her own very well.  She still can’t maintain her own body temperature so she is in a heated isolette.  Luckily, we are allowed to stick our arms in and touch her little head, feet, and tummy.  These touches are so important to her development, and we love getting to feel her soft skin and hold her tiny, long-toed feet.  We also get to hold her most days. I do “kangaroo care” with her.  this is where you do skin to skin contact.  It’s so cute!  I wear a tank top, and they tuck her little butt and feet into the top of it and she rests her head on my chest.  I love that time more than any other because I can feel her breathe and the warmth of her skin on mine makes me feel better about her being alone in the isolette the rest of the time.  I hate that she is alone in there, but I also know that she needs the quiet, restful environment of it to grow.  I still cry every day though when I’m at home because I miss her, and I am grieving the loss of holding my baby in her first days of life.  I’ve never cried this much about anything.  It’s exhausting both emotionally and physically, and I’m also going through a ton of hormone changes, so that makes it even harder.

Anyway, back to Aliza Jane.  She had her VCUG today.  We have been waiting since Monday for this test because it kept getting pushed back.  On Monday, she was supposed to get a catheter in her urethra, but the radiology technicians couldn’t get it in because they literally couldn’t see it.  It was too tiny.  But she cried and cried about it, so they didn’t try very hard.  They also didn’t want to risk infection.  So they rescheduled it for Tuesday, but the urologist go too busy, so they finally did it today.  I was dreading the results of this test, but it turned out well!  A VCUG is a procedure in which they inject dye into the bladder through a catheter to see if there is reflux of urine back into the kidneys.  There was no reflux as the dye stayed in her bladder.  This is great news, but she still has the blockage in her kidneys, so we will have to talk to the urologist about what to do next.  Most likely it will be an ultrasound and monitoring of her condition.  The good thing is, she is producing a normal amount of urine for  baby her size, so we are hoping that the blockage will correct itself in time.

They are also doing a series of tests on her because she has had low blood sugar.  We had geneticists and other doctors taking blood and examining her yesterday and today.  They are trying to determine if the blood sugar issue is just because she is a preemie or if there is an underlying cause.  Please pray that all of these tests come back normal.  I would love to explain all of the tests, but I don’t understand them myself, so I don’t want to butcher them.  All I know is that the more tests they want to run on her, the more I worry about her.  It has been extremely hard for me emotionally and some days I wish they would just do the tests without telling me about them.  But really, I do want to know.  I just don’t want to worry! 🙂

They took her off of her glucose drip IV today for 24 hours to see how her blood sugar did on its own.  Normal blood sugar for babies her size is 54+.  When they took it before they took her off the IV, it was 86.  Tonight, 10 hours after the glucose was stopped, it was 69!  This is great news because she is maintaining her blood sugar with just her feedings.  She is up to 27 cc’s per feeding, which is just 3 cc’s (or milliliters) short of an ounce!  She gets fed every 3 hours.

I am pumping milk for her around the clock.  I was doing it every 3 hours even through the night, but my supply has topped off at 30 cc’s per pumping session, so in order to increase it, I am pumping every 2 hours during the day and every 3 at night.  This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, but it is so worth it.  I will stick with it no matter what.  But please pray with me that my supply will increase!  Otherwise, she will surpass what I am able to make in just a few days and she will have to be put on formula.  I want to keep her on my milk as long as possible because it is so much better for her!

That’s all the update I can think of right now.  Forgive me for the sloppy, unfancy writing, but it’s too late to be eloquent right now!

Also, if you want to visit Aliza, we are up there every day.  Just text or call us!

~Aliza’s mama