Anxious

Xavier is coming home this week! I'm not sure of the exact day because the NICU team are reluctant to quote an exact date, but steps toward going home have been made. We brought his car seat to NICU yesterday so they could do the car seat test on him. This is usually the last test before going home. They put the babies in the car seat to make sure they can tolerate being in a car seat for the ride home. They have also asked us to notify our pediatrician that we are coming home and to make an appointment to be seen Tuesday of next week. We are very excited and anxious to take him home. My guess is that he will be home by Saturday.
I am so glad that I prepared for his arrival early. I started working on his nursery when I was around 24 weeks pregnant, so it is now ready and waiting on him!
I can concentrate on him, instead of having to run around town picking out things for his room. As you can imagine, I'll be busy for the next few months. :)

Here are some pictures of his nursery











All we need is the baby!

No Answers

My 6 week postpartum visit went well, but it also confirmed that there will never be answers as to why my body does not like to be pregnant for a full nine months.

We talked in depth about why I went into preterm labor, and sadly, it is still and always will be a mystery. The pathology report on the placenta showed that it was 100% healthy and normal. Dr. W says clinically, she believes I abrupted since there was so much blood right before I had my c-section, but she can never say for sure. She says that I am just not a good candidate for another pregnancy, which is 100% fine with us because we only wanted two. She is just as disappointed as I am about not going further into a pregnancy than I did with Layla, but she is 100% confident that there was nothing else we could have done to have a better outcome. Talking with her really brought closure to this chapter in my life.

One Month

Xavier had his first bottle yesterday. His nurse told me before she started that babies this young usually do not have a good sucking action, so things may not go so well the first time. Well of course, in keeping with his trend of shocking people, Xavier took the whole bottle in less than 10 minutes! He loved it. The nurse tried to put the bottle in his mouth, and he promptly refused. She dribbled breastmilk into his mouth, and this piqued his interest. He instantly started to suck and did not stop until he was finished. The nurse was so excited that she said she was going to call his doctor to update him and see if he can get bumped up to two bottles a day instead of one. They will gradually increase his bottle feeds until he is taking eight bottles per day. When this happens, they will remove his feeding tube.


He is now 3 lbs 3 oz, and has had his first eye exam and visit from the physical therapist. The eye exam went well and his eyes are fine. The physical therapy visit was uneventful, but she did explain stress cues to me, such as splaying of the fingers, and this was helpful. When premature babies are overwhelmed by too much stimuli, they will show you they are stressed out and need peace and quiet.
Yesterday at 1 pm, it was feeding time for three newborns. How do I know this? They promptly let the entire nursery know. It was as if someone pressed a button on each baby because as soon as the clock struck 1, the babies began to scream in three part harmony. This of course made some of their monitors go off because crying so forcefully made their heart rates go up. Xavier started to squirm while I was holding him and straightened his legs. I knew he was becoming stressed, so I put him back in his isolet. Here is a picture of his grumpy look. He was not very happy about the noisy trio.




Layla is still having a difficult time adjusting because X's hospital stay has disrupted her schedule. I think she is starting to understand a little bit more that we had a baby. It's taking her a while to understand because she has never seen him in person. I talk to her about him all the time, and she loves to look through my phone at his pictures. She calls him W-X. LOL! That is definitely one for the baby book.

3 lbs!

As of May 10, Xavier passed 3 lbs! He was 3 lbs 1.4 oz, and I am so excited because passing 3 lbs was the first of my mini goals that I set for him. He will possibly start bottle feeding this Wednesday, and from then on the focus will be on learning to bottle feed 8 times per day and continuing to gain weight. I am so ready to bring him home to join our family full time!