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.

32 Week Appointment

Today I had my appointment. I fully went in expecting it to be in and out as it has been for the past 2 months.
Blood pressure and urine sample normal. I gained 1 pound. That's up only 1 lb in the past 4 weeks for a grand total of 12 lbs.
The dr comes in and she tells me I'm doing great with my weight gain by keeping it under 20 lbs, however, she wants to do an u/s to make sure the baby is gaining and doing well.
That got me scared. She takes me to the u/s room and the sonographer is in there with another patient. I had to wait in the area outside the u/s room. Waiting there alone made me worry more and more, and soon my worry spiraled out of control.
15 minutes later I'm in the chair for the u/s. The first thing I saw was that the baby was so still. You already know what I thought, this is in spite of the fact that I had just heard the baby's heart rate by doppler with the dr. Irrational fears.
Anyway, she did some measurements and said everything looked great. The baby is 4 lbs 5 oz and she is measuring in the 43rd percentile. I asked what that meant, and she said on average babies measure at the 50th percentile and anything above that means the baby is on the larger side, and anything below that means the baby is on the smaller side.
I am glad she's doing fine, but of course I'm disturbed that she didn't quite make the grade. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I sure wished she had said the baby was measuring in the 51st percentile at least.

*sigh*

I'm trying not to think about it.
I'm trying to figure out how to get another u/s.
I'm trying to behave as a civil, rational expectant mother.