Today

Today I was officially discharged from the hospital. But I will be staying in my room on a "hotel" stay which is only $15 a night. It's a wonderful thing that they do that for the NICU parents, then I can continue to go back and forth. My schedule is like this.
-Exit the Mother/Baby unit
-Take the Elevator downstairs
-Enter the NICU
-Scrub up to the Elbows
-Find Walker usually getting his diaper changed (They change the diapers usually and they always weight them)
-Weigh him before the feed
-Sit down and they hand me my baby and a clean blanket and burp cloth
-Hope that he eats well, and sit there doing everything I can to make that happen- usually takes about an hour even though they say they will only give me 3o minutes
-Weigh him to see how much he ate and wait for threats on what they will do next
-Put him away, and make sure he's all hooked up where he needs to be
-Come back to my room
-Pump for 15 minutes, collect milk and clean pumping supplies
-Go to the bathroom
-Try to get some rest for maybe an hour before my 3 hours is up and I start all over again.

So I'm usually getting no more than 1 hour of sleep at a time. Sometimes I have skipped pumping to have a little extra time. And frequently, a phone call or meal takes up part of my sleep time.

So I'm a little tired. I find myself falling asleep in the chair with Walker, which I'd rather not do right now. It's such a different kind of fatigue though, pregnancy fatigue is your whole body all the time. New mom fatigue is a little more like you can push through the tiredness, but if you sit down and relax you can fall asleep instantly. It's a lot more pleasant. Not to mention that I can get comfortable while I sleep, which is wonderful.

Today Walker had at least 2 feeds that were a complete bust. He won't eat for anything during those meals. He won't take a bottle, binky, anything. He is completely uninterested, whether asleep or awake, he's not doing it! He had 1 feed that was decent, and then 1 that was perfect. The volume is increasing, and he was doing a lot of gulping the last time, he seemed very grateful for that.

Even in the best feeds though, the NICU nurse said he is only getting 1/3 of what he is supposed to. So we have been getting threats all day to put in a feeding tube. He is also going to be getting some kind of 22 nutrient something or other supplement every day now. Sounds gross. Helps him get some extra nutrients that a pretermer needs.

His jaundice was up today, but only a little bit. And it dropped on the graph to a lower section. So that was good news, although even if they tell me to, I don't want to take him off the lights yet. I think it will take awhile for his liver to catch up and really break down the bilirubin. Right now, it's probably just from the lights.

His breathing is spectacular. His temperature is good. His heartrate drops occasionally and sets off the monitors. There is no specific reason for this, so the nurses aren't worried about it now. His oxygen levels are almost always perfect. And as far as I know, he hasn't dropped below 5 pounds. The last two days he has hovered right around there.

The biggest problem in the NICU is Evelyn. She is his next door neighbor. She screams all the time. She screams when she's held, fed, whatever. Her parents have been so patient, but I feel really bad for them. They come to visit her and she screams in their face. Her monitors are always going off because she screams so much it messes with her heartrate, oxygen, and breathing. Walker's monitor will have a little window pop up showing what Evelyn is doing when she sets off her monitors. And if her parent's aren't there, I can just hear the NICU nurses eyeballs rolling as they go back to try and comfort her. Poor thing!

Her screaming doesn't bother Walker though. He doesn't seem to notice anything around him but me. He likes me! He wouldn't mind hanging out with me all day. But they say that he rarely makes a peep without me there. So I'm glad to know he isn't screaming when I'm not around.

Walker is getting antibiotics still in case of infection. I think tomorrow he will have the labs done and we will have more conclusive evidence of whether he ever had an infection. If he didn't, he can come off of them tomorrow. They are stinky, I can smell them on him, and I'd love for him to be done so he can come home sooner.

No word on coming home really. He needs to prove himself, and we just have to see day by day how he does on that.