Day 17, Tuesday, November 30th

Tate is 2 weeks old today and to mark the occasion his umbilical cord fell off! I had told the nurse I wanted to keep it – she looked at me a little strange – but wrote it down in his chart anyway. Then when Jamie got up there at 9 there was a sticky note on his isolette to “save the cord for mom” so the day nurse must have noticed it was about to come off. Jamie got to give Tate a bath tonight and it fell off after his bath so he brought it home for me. I kept Hudson’s and put it in his scrapbook, so I’ll do the same with Tate’s.

I started out the day with my 2 week check up with Dr. Jensen. Good news is I’m back down to my pre-pregnancy weight, bad news was there is a blood clot above my incision. But he thought it would just dissolve on its own and go away, so I hope he is right. I hadn’t noticed it until he started pushing on it but that spot is swollen and very tender. I asked him again if there was any reason for all this happening and he said they never found one. He said I would be considered high risk for another pregnancy, more so because I would want to do a VBAC then because of the chance of having another premature baby, although it’s certainly a risk if we decide to have another baby.

The last brady that Tate had was Monday evening at 7 pm so that’s good news. I spoke to the Nurse Practitioner about them a little today and she said they were sure it was from the reflux and now that they have increased his feeding time to 1 hour instead of 30 minutes it seems to have resolved itself. She did tell me that preemies have a weak sphincter muscle in the first place (the muscle that closes to keep food from coming back up) and then with his feeding tube down his throat it doesn’t allow it to close all the way anyways, hence the reflux problem most preemies have. She also told me that it seemed like most of his d sats were happening when he was moving or being moved and that was an issue with the way the monitor works, rather than because he is not breathing right. She also said they did change the monitor to 90-100 instead of 85-100 on his pulse ox because he’s breathing room air and they want to monitor it better.

Tate was sleeping really well when I got there and the nurse said that is good to see. She said when they start getting “wiry” and restless they are burning too many calories so it’s better for them to just sleep all the time. So although I was excited to see him more awake the other day and moving around, that’s actually not a good thing for him right now. She also told me that when he gets to be close to 4 pounds the nurses will start dressing him in preemie clothes instead of just a diaper.

Tate is looking a little bald on top but still has lots of hair around the sides and back. I’m not sure if he lost some hair with the IV tape or if that’s how it always was. His hair is getting lighter though. Today the temperature on his isolette was turned down to 29.6 degrees (Celsius). It’s always been 30.2 degrees so that means he is needing less help to regulate his body temp. We saw him lift up his head and turn it to the other side for the first time today too.

Jamie came up at noon to watch him “nurse” but things didn’t go so well this time. He didn’t want to latch and his heart started racing. It got up into the 180’s and it usually is only 150-160. His respiratory rate was all over the place as well. After a few minutes I switched him to just kangaroo hold him but he still didn’t really like that either. So a few minutes after that we put him back in the isolette. It took him a little bit to calm back down but his heartrate and respiratory rate did finally settle back down. We had to leave after that but I called at 4 to check on him and she said he was resting comfortably but his heartrate was still up in the 170’s. When Jamie went back up at 9 it was back down to his normal range and all his vitals looked good.

It is so frustrating to see him start to have all this weird stuff going on with his vitals. Everything was so perfect the first week or so and his alarms rarely went off. But now they are going off all the time and his heartrate is dropping or racing, his pulse ox is dropping, or his respiratory rate is too high. The nurses keep saying he is just acting like a preemie but it’s hard to watch it happen. Plus we aren’t spending as much time up at the NICU now and it makes it that much harder to leave when I’m worried about his heart or whatever else is going on. And he lost 30 grams today. First time he’s lost since the very beginning too.

I was pretty upset about it tonight while reading Hudson his bedtime story. I was reading him his book about the NICU and kept crying (Oh yeah, that was only yesterday that I didn’t cry. The tears have flowed freely today.). Hudson kept looking at me and then he’d say “No, mom. Use your normal voice.” Also earlier in the evening I asked him if he thought his baby brother would have his eyes. He looked at me and grabbed one of his eyes and said “When my baby brother comes home, is he going to pull my eyes out?” Poor guy, this whole thing is pretty confusing to him. I ended up sleeping with him for awhile last night cause I just wanted to cuddle. Probably not the best idea cause now he’s going to want me to lay down with him every night….but it was comforting.

“Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward Him for the life of your young children.” Lamentations 2:19