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!

PNICU

Xavier was moved to the Progressive NICU on Thursday night. When we left him that afternoon, he was doing great. He was still breathing fine with nothing new to report. We talked to the on call dr since Xavier's dr was visiting Harris' NICU for the day, and he told us repeatedly how impressed he was with Xavier. He smiled and told us, "This little guy thinks he's older than what he is."
When Tim called his nurse later that night to check on him, she told him that he had been moved to the PNICU since he was doing so well! This is definitely a step forward, which is what I pray for each and every day, all day. Babies are moved to the Progressive Unit once they are considered not critical.
Visiting him yesterday in this unit was a whole new ball game. The room is noticeably brighter. There are open cribs in the whole room instead of walls and walls of incubators with tiny spaces for parents to squeeze in next to them. There aren't as many monitors and machines wailing and beeping constantly. Toys, rocking chairs, car seats, and swings are in the room. Moms can be seen holding the babies and breastfeeding. There are also volunteers that visit this unit to hold the babies and cuddle with them. This makes me feel better since it is impossible for us to be with him all day, and the nurses do not have time to hold babies just to cuddle. The unit is just much more relaxed. This will be his new home until he is released, which I am hoping will be within the next 4 weeks.

Growing

It is hard to tell from pictures just how small Xavier really is. When people see his picture, they immediately exclaim that he looks like a big boy, or that he doesn't look like he's only 2 1/2 lbs. Seeing him in person is an entirely different experience.
Yesterday, I decided to take home one of the diapers he wears for comparison to a newborn diaper sample that I have.





He is getting bigger every day, and each day we see him he looks like a new baby. He has more hair now, his skin is getting darker, and his features are becoming more defined. I try not to get caught up in his weight since we are in for a long journey. I decided instead of asking each and every day how much he weighs, I will ask his nurses once a week how much he weighs. This is how they are charting his progress anyway since daily weights tend to fluctuate.

No More CPAP!

Instead of doing 3 hours off and 3 hours on to give Xavier's nose a rest, his doctor decided that he no longer had to use the CPAP at all! He has been machine free for about two days now. Usually babies go from being on a vent, to the CPAP, to a nasal canula, but Xavier has avoided both the vent and canula to breathing 100% unassisted! I am so very, very happy and thankful for that. I knew he could do it because there have been so many occasions when he had removed it on his own and was breathing just fine. I am so thankful for his nurse Raye :-) for pushing his doctor to give him a chance to try it on his own. She believed in him and knew he could do it!
His dr wants me to try breastfeeding him next week. Hmmm. Not sure how that's going to go since his mouth is the size of a dime and my breast is.....much larger than that. This will definitely be interesting.

Break from CPAP

Today when I went to see Xavier, I immediately noticed that he had removed his CPAP. It was resting on top of his nose instead of inside of his nose. He HATES his CPAP. His nurses say that he moves so much that he pushes the little prongs further in his nose than it needs to go. This is one of many occasions that he has removed it somehow. The nurse practitioner decided that since he was doing so well breathing on his own and breathing room air from day one, she would try him off of the CPAP for three hours. So what will happen now is that he will do three hours off the CPAP and three hours on. This will give his nose a rest. The prongs are uncomfortable for him and push his nose flat against his face, piggy style. I held him today kangaroo style and his breathing remained stable the entire time. He didn't desat once, and his oxygen levels stayed 97-100. If he does well on and off the CPAP, they will start to wean him off of it early. His nurses are impressed. They usually don't wean them off until they are closer to 32 weeks. Nearly all the nurses on his floor came to see this little peanut free of his machines so soon.


Today was my first time seeing him free of all the machines. The cpap has kind of molded his nose flatter against his face than is natural, but he's so beautiful, and of course the creases will resolve itself once he's able to give his nose a rest!