March 20, 2012

March 20, 2012

Weight: 3 pounds 2 ounces. Still gaining!

Alarms: 11 total in the past 24 hours. Apparently this has been his standard number for several days. Hey, at least he’s consistent : )

Labs: Electrolytes all within normal limits. Bilirubin up to 6.6, however no need for more phototherapy yet. Hematocrit (Hct) down to 25. No transfusion yet, but may need in the next couple of days if it drops to 23-24. Also, at 2 weeks of age they can start him on iron supplementation. If he holds steady until Friday, we could possibly do just iron and not have to give him blood. Hold on tight, buddy! You can make it!

Oxygen/Lungs: Still on the 1L of 21% oxygen, doing fine.

Belly/Bowels: Had one feeding with a residual of 9 ml. They fed the residual back to him and held that feeding, but all others were given. Apparently he had a very large bowel movement right after that episode, so the dr was not too concerned about it : )

Skin-to-Skin/Holding Time: I held him for about and hour then Alex took over so I could pump. We both love this time. Alex always offers to take him so I can pump : ) He is such a great dad!

Feedings: Continuing to advance his feeding amount. Not sure what he is up to, but somewhere around 20 ml every 3 hours. Hard to believe his little tummy can tolerate all that!

March 19, 2012

March 19, 2012

Weight: 3 pounds 1 ounce. Over birth weight! Yeah!

Alarms: Still having some bradycardia’s, but nothing that he doesn’t “fix” himself. They say this will resolve with age.

Labs: No labs today, except for blood gases (ABG). This is a measure of circulating oxygen and CO2. Apparently they were so good that he got to graduate to ALL NC time! No more CPAP! Thank goodness. He really didn’t like that thing in his nose.

Oxygen/Lung Status: 1 liter NC continuously-no more CPAP!

Belly/Bowels: Still continuing to poop on his own. No more suppositories! So glad he’s getting all that bilirubin out of his system.

Skin-to-skin Holding Time: Another 2 ½ hours today. Love that time!

Feedings: Tolerating the increase in milk through his neotube. [This is the tube that goes down his throat to his belly.] Only a slight bit of residual (0.5-2 ml), nothing to be concerned about.

All in all, he is doing very well. Labs will be drawn tomorrow, so we’ll see if he’s still progressing. Stay tuned!

March 18, 2012

March 18, 2012

Weight: 2 pounds 15 ounces. Up one ounce and almost back to birth weight. Yeah!

Alarms: Dr. didn’t say how many, but did say that he’s had the same amount while on NC as he did with CPAP. That’s a good thing.

Labs: No labs today.

Oxygen/Lung Status: Because he is not alarming any more than he was before, they changed him to 9 hours NC time and 3 hours CPAP time. He’s movin’ up!

Belly/Bowels: Like I said yesterday, he had two BM’s all by himself. Hopefully the trend keeps up!

Skin-to-Skin/Holding Time: None yet today. We are hoping to get there to do that this afternoon. It’s Alex’s turn today : )

March 17, 2012

March 17, 2012

Weight: 2 pounds 14 ounces. Up two ounces! Doc said this is a good gain, but don’t expect that much every day.

Alarms: 7 total bradychardia’s, no intervention. This means that his heart rate dropped below the normal limits, but required no stimulation or intervention. In other words, his heart rate drops then he brings himself right back up to normal. This is normal for preemies and will usually resolve itself with more age.

Labs: Bilirubin 4.2 (3.0 yesterday). Back up after taking away the phototherapy, but nothing alarming. Hct down to 29, transfusion very possible by this next week. Once again, this is normal for small babies. Labs will be re-drawn on Monday or Tuesday.

Oxygen/Lung Status: Still on 6 hours NC, 6 hours CPAP. Doing fine so far. Having a little bit of tachypnea (fast breathing), but oxygen saturation still holding strong. I’m assuming this means he is trying to adjust to less oxygen. He’s working hard, but so far keeping up!

Belly/Bowels: Had 2 bowel movements while I was at the hospital today! They hadn’t given him any glycerin suppositories since yesterday, either, so he did it all on his own. Go Eddie!

I held him today for almost 2 ½ hours. Holding him has definitely become my favorite part of the day! We do skin-to-skin holding with him anytime we can, which literally means he lays without anything on but a diaper against one of our bare chests. He’s so little that they basically just pack his little legs down the shirt and he curls up on our chest. The best part about that is that you can hear all of his little coos, grunts and yawns. It really is the sweetest thing.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more tomorrow! And keep praying that Little E continues to grown and mature each day.

March 16, 2012

As you all know, little Edward (Eddie) Ray was born prematurely at 28 1/2 weeks. I have decided to use this blog to keep my family and friends posted on his daily updates. The neonatologist that seems him each day calls us and gives us a detailed update as to how little E is doing. We have been very happy with the dr's and how professional yet caring they are. Here is the update for March 16:

March 16, 2012

Little Eddie seems to be doing well, according to the neonatologist, Dr. Heimes. Dr. Heimes has been seeing Little E for a couple of days now and we seem to really like him. He’s calm and seems to be genuinely concerned for the health of our baby.

E seems to be already making tons of progress. Today he weighs 2 pounds, 11 ½ ounces. He gained half an ounce! Yay! Dr. H says that this is an appropriate/healthy amount for him to gain in a day. His feedings started to increase last night; they will increase him by 2 ml every 12 hours. While we were there last night, they started the increase at 5 pm and he got a whopping 4 ml of milk.

Side note- I am so happy that they are giving him my milk. They are huge believers in giving the mom’s own milk as soon as possible. It helps coat the gut and stimulate digestion, as well as the obvious immunities that everyone already knows about. They feed it to him through a small tube that goes down his throat to his belly, called an OG (orogastric) tube.

Because Eddie has been doing so great on the 9 hours CPAP/ 3 hours nasal cannula (NC) trials, they decided that he could graduate to being on 6 hours of CPAP and 6 hours of NC, 2 times per day. His last chest x ray looked great, so they thought there is no reason for him to start weaning. The nurse and I spoke as well and we decided that they will put him on the NC from 2-8pm to accommodate us being there to hold him, etc while he is free from CPAP. They have been great about accommodating his cares to meet our needs as much as possible. Obviously bigger issues that require a routine, such as his feeding schedule, is not ever altered. As annoying as it is sometimes, it is really the best for him to stay on a very rigorous schedule.

His bilirubin came way down as well, down to 3.0. Although his previous 4.4 was still within normal limits, they had kept the phototherapy light on just to make sure he was going to continue on the downward slope. With it being 3.0 today, they went ahead and got rid of the light. No more sunglasses! His other labs were all looking great too, but they are still keeping an eye on his hemoglobin and hematocrit (Hgb/Hct). Currently his Hct is 29. They will start considering transfusion at somewhere between 24 and 28, depending on his symptoms. With him being as young as he is, his body has not yet learned to produce red blood cells at an adequate rate, so this causes most premature babies to be anemic. It is not an alarming situation, but it does, however, mean that there is a good chance he will need a transfusion in the next week or so. They have done a wonderful job at explaining to us all about transfusions, their risks/benefits, and our different options.

He has not had a bowel movement on his own yet, but no one is really worried about that yet. They do give him glycerin suppositories every 24 hours if needed if he hasn’t had a BM, and those always seem to produce one or two. Because he is not spending much time in the vertical position and is not taking in very much food volume, they say this is very normal for babies his age. Once he starts getting higher amounts of food, his GI system will start catching up.

I think that is all for today. Oh, one more thing. Dr. Heimes said that he is rotating somewhere else for the next week, but he hopes to take care of Eddie when he gets back. He said that E is going to be one of those babies that everyone fights to take care of because he’s so cute and is progressing so well : ) He knows how to make a mom smile!

27 weeks 6 days

So I've been following this cute pregnancy blog and she used this little checklist for each week. I really liked following it each week, so I'm going to steal it and use it as well. Here we go:

How far along? 27 Weeks 6 days

Total weight gain: 31 whopping pounds. Holy cow.
Maternity clothes? Oh yeah, since about week 15 or so!
Stretch marks? No, not yet!
Sleep: Sleeping fine, just waking up every couple of hours to go pee and change positions.
Best moment this week: Accomplishing a Fusion Fitness class....at 27 weeks pregnant : )

Miss Anything? Many, many things. With the warm weather that we've been having, I've really been wishing I could sit on the back patio with a Corona in hand. Don't judge me.
Movement: Tons. Small Fry loves it when I have snacks and when I sit down after a long day at work.

Food cravings: My appetite has seemingly ballooned in the last few days. I feel like a bottomless pit at times.

Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope
Gender: Boy
Labor Signs: Nope..thank goodness!
Symptoms: Low back pain, hip discomfort, occasional heartburn, sore boobs (again) increasing appetite, acne? on my upper thighs-what is this?!, achy feet

Belly Button in or out? In. Hanging in there by a thread
Wedding rings on or off? On
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy
Looking forward to: Re-gaining control of my own body. And having a cute little baby to show for all this hard work : )

Here are a couple of pics from the last few weeks: Here I am after a quick yoga

workout at home. Alex insisted we

take a picture. I look ridiculous.
(25 weeks, 4 days:)





Getting ready to go out to dinner at Dodge
City Distillery (25 Weeks, 6 Days):



















We have been running around like mad getting baby stuff squared away.We registered at Buy Buy Baby last weekend, Alex painted the baby's room today, I have been continuously looking for stuff to add to our registry and trying to get excess stuff out of the spare bedroom.

Alex also finished touching up the window in the bathroom, so we are now ready to have our tile guy come and remodel our bathroom. I'm excited to have that done!

As I said in my little checklist above, I attended a Fusion Fitness workout class this past Thursday. I was really needing a workout that made me actually feel like I was working my muscles. Working out is really the only thing that makes me feel normal, as weird as that sounds. And "pregnancy" workouts just weren't doing it for me. So I sucked it up and decided to leap back into Fusion, which I've talked about before, and I am SO happy I did. I made some modifications in the movements and took it slow, but surprisingly, I made it through better than some of the other attendants! If you don't remember, Fusion is an incredibly high energy class that combines yoga, pilates, resistance training, and flexibility. Basically it's an hour long bootcamp. Some have compared it to the workout video Insanity. Anyway, I loved every minute of it. And now I know I can do it, so I will be returning. It's amazing how a silly workout can make me feel so much better about my huge pregnant body!

Alright, I think that's all for now. I have a slight headache that I must go nurse....

24 Weeks

I know it has been a few weeks since my last post, but let me tell you. We have been busy! Preparing for a baby is time consuming and, at times, stressful. So many things to think about. I must say, however, that preparing for a baby is a lot more fun than wedding planning, in my opinion. Here are a few things we've been working on:
We started our Bradley class a few weeks ago. We got in a little late and were behind by about 3 classes, but our instructor openly welcomed us and got us caught us up over a few week night sessions. So far we are LOVING the class and learning so much. Alex has been absolutely by far the best, most wonderful coach and supporter thus far. He is learning so much and has been a great encourager for me! I love my husband ; )
We finally found a dresser/changing table on Craigslist. It is the perfect color. Now it's time to buy the crib to match it!
I found a nursery design on Pinterest awhile back and have since been hunting down what all I'll need to make it happen. Here's what we're going for:
The paint has been bought, and I just found a vinyl wall decal from Etsy that we will use for the letters on the wall. The dresser we got is a very dark brown, like the one here. Left on our furniture purchase list is: rocker/recliner, crib, rug and small storage cabinet (which we've already picked out from Target.) (Just waiting for it to go back on sale.) Unfortunately, the bedding pictured was discontinued in 2008, so I am currently searching for something similar. I just LOVE this room. I can't wait til it's finished!
You know how some people say they loved being pregnant? Well, I've decided that I am NOT one of those people. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's all worth it in the end...yada yada yada. Yes, I am super thrilled to be able to hold my little boy once this is all over. But I tell you what. I AM ready to feel like I have my own body back. No one can ever really prepare you for the changes that take place during pregnancy. Here are some recent changes/annoyances:
-Weight gain. As most of you know, I am a pretty healthy person. I like to exercise and I like to eat things that me feel good and strong. My doctor had originally told me that I could resume all exercise that I was doing pre-pregnancy, but couldn't get my heart rate about 140 bpm. Let's just say that ALL of my work outs involved my heart rate being WAYYYY over 140, so I had to cut down SIGNIFICANTLY. Well, to date I've gained 25 pounds. And when I told my dr that I was concerned about this, she proceeds to ask me "Have you been eating a lot of sweets?" I wanted to gauge her eyeballs out and cry. Then she tells me that gaining 35 pounds total (with four months left to go, mind you) would probably be ok. Are you kidding me?
However, after much research, I have found out that the heart rate recommendation is decades old. No guideline nowadays states that your heart rate needs to stay under 140 due to the fact that everyone mom is so different. So needless to say, I am working my way back up towards my previous activity level. Rest assured, I don't feel like I'm overdoing it, nor do I feel like I'm going to keel over throughout my workouts. But I DO feel happier and healthier by continuing my normal routine. It makes me more sane : )
-Lots and lots of baby kicks! Karate chops, hiccups, punches, you name it. Baby K is on the move!
-Achy feet at the end of the day
-Back aches. My muscles are feelin the burn back there.
-Tiredness is setting back in. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that it takes me an hour to get comfortable in bed at night, then I have to go pee and start the whole process over again. Last night Alex took me to Target to buy a body pillow. Last night I finally felt like I got to sleep. Night and day difference...why didn't I purchase this before?!
-Cravings: Lots of fruits and veggies. We just got a new juicer and I am loving it! Other staples: eggplant, blueberries, milk, cheese.
Anyway, I think I'll wrap it up for now. We'll keep you updated as Baby Koehn continues to bake!