Day 3: Bicep pain and Freedom!

I know my blogs get a little long, but they are as much for me and future reference as well as the details the family wants to know, so feel free to just skip to the pictures if you want!

I have no idea what someone who just had a baby is supposed to look like, but apparently I don't! I can't tell you how many people are like, you look great, you don't look like someone who just had a baby. It just cracks me up! Really, other than being sore in the nether regions from the stitches, I don't think I'd have any pain, and it's just more of being a little sore than anything else, or so I thought until yesterday....my biceps were sore.

Why in the world are my biceps sore?? Then I recalled the instructions from Dr How to grab my legs behind my knees and pull as hard as possible when trying to push her out, so my biceps are sore, they haven't been used much lately!

Last night I went back down for a quick peek at Mallory before we ate dinner and then Ben and I went back down for a little while after we ate. We didn't get her out, she had one of her little breathing episodes....sometimes preemies just forget to breathe from time to time. As scary as that is, its perfectly normal at that age, but we got to see it happen and what they have to do, which is basically just stimulate her by rubbing her feet or picking her up a little bit, and then it registers with them again, I'm not in the womb, I have to breathe!

So, Ben was off to Hampton Inn to sleep last night and I was wide awake at 6:30 am, so I went down to the nursery around 7:30 am once the shift change was over. The nurse was just finishing up giving her another bottle! She was sucking it right down, so she's really taking to a bottle well!! They had taken her nasal cannula off, so even though that was nothing more than room air flowing into her, it's gone and she's breathing totally on her own and so far so good!

She said she does look a little jaundicy, if that's a word, and may need a little photo light therapy, which is just moving them to a bed with the blue lights which help with that, but they will see if it gets any worse or not.

I'm currenlty waiting on Dr Tabb to come by and hopefully give me my discharge orders and then I'm heading back down to the nursery for 1 1/2 hours of Kangaroo time!!

I got to go down to the Nursery at 10:30 to see about feeding Mallory, trying to see if she would breast feed and then getting some good Kangaroo time! But, first things first, I got to change her diaper! They are so teeny, but she just had a pee diaper, so nothing major. Since she had taken a bottle earlier, they decided to see how she would take to the breast, and she actually did better than Joy the nurse thought she would, so they let her try that for a while and then just fed her through the feeding tube for the rest. Then we got some good Kangarooing time....I just love that skin to skin time with her!!

While I was Kangarooing, Laura from ABAK came by because she was in town and got to see her too, it's always fun to have visitors! Then they called from up in the room and Dr Cuthrell was up there waiting for me to go through a final chat so I could get discharged, so I had to put her back, but they were wanting to get her under the lights for photo therapy for her jaundice, so it wasn't too bad timing. Here's the little "sun glasses" they put on her for when she's under the blue lights....how cute do they look!



So, back up to the room do see Dr Cuthrell, they said they are just still amazed I lasted 7 weeks and 2 days, most people with pProm don't last that long. So we went through a few things with them and the nurse and then they were still waiting on a few other things, so they said we could go off site for lunch, so Ben and I went about 2 blocks down to Calistoga's, essentially Panera named something else. It was almost weird to be somewhere other than the hospital!

We came back and checked in on little bean at the nursery, she was doing well under the lights....judge for yourself, but it looks like she might be a little too comfy, almost posing like she's in a tanning bed, LOL!



So we said our goodbyes until tomorrow and of course I teared up...first time I've cried through this whole ordeal, but I know she's in good hands!! Plus, now is actually a good time for us to be away because with the light therapy, she needs to rest and be in there as much as possible, so that will give her a good 24 hours without interruption from us.

Dr Singh also told us that if we wanted that since they, the Nortons neonatal unit, have Owensboro set up now with their own intermediate nursery for 29 weekers and more, we could actually transfer her there possibly as early as this weekend. As exciting as the option of bringing her closer to home is, Ben and I both were in total agreement that we feel she is best served in Louisville for now. Not that Owensboro isn't good, but I'd rather her be even more stable, maybe just needing to working on feeding/growing before we moved her back to Owensboro.

Dr. Singh said her week rotation to Owensboro would be in two weeks and if she was still in the hospital then, that might be a good time to transfer since she would be there all week with us as well, so we may do that then, just not ready to yet.

Finally we got everything all discharged, and with a Tetnus shot for me, we were off to head home!! When we got back to Owensboro I was off to town to go get a rental breast pump, get my perscriptions filled and a couple other things and Ben went to the grocery and to get Tucker.

When I got home Ben videoed Tucker's reaction to seeing me....I'll post it later but it was funny because I'm not sure he realized who I was for a minute. Then it finally hit him and he was jumping around and barking! I'm sure he's like, what happened to you for the past 2 months!!

So now I'm just kicked back and relaxing. I called to check in on Mallory around 5 and she said all was well and she was doing great. They gave her some caffeine to help with her breathing episodes and she hasn't had anymore since they gave that to her. I'll check in again before we go to bed, but she's in good hands, we just already miss her!!

Here's a few more pictures and I've got some videos that I'm having problems uploading at the moment, so I'll try again later:



Also, I'm LOVING being home!!!