A Star is Born!!

This blog is to record our adventures as parents to our first child Noah. He was much wished and longed for after 3 years of infertility treatment. Noah was born at 27 weeks and 4 days by emergency c-section on Sunday 13th September 2009 due to antepartum haemorrhage. Luckily my partner Kim was already in hospital because she woke up the Tuesday prior with a small bleed. Then they discovered that Noah was small for dates due to placental insufficiency. He was only measuring 24 weeks when we were almost 27 weeks!!! Kim was admitted and put on strict bed rest with a plan to have a doppler scan every 2 days to measure the blood flow through the cord and a growth scan every 2 weeks. Luckily our Dr decided to give her two doses of steroids just in case. We made it to 5 days and she started to bleed profusely so it was off to theatre in a hurry.

Everyone is well, Noah is in NICU but he is a TROOPER!!! 750gms (or 1pound 10 ounces!!!!!!!!) with apgars of 6 at one minute and 9 at five minutes. They intubated him for the first 11 hours of life only to get him settled in NICU and get his umbilical lines in etc, but they didn't need to because he kept wanting to pull out the tube because he was breathing on his own! He was so feisty that they took him off the respirator and put him on Cpap instead. They have never had a baby this young on Cpap alone, so they don't have nasal prongs small enough for him, so they are stretching his little nostrils! He hasn't needed any oxygen since birth!

We are so proud of our LITTLE bundle! Will update when I can, as you can imagine life is hectic at the moment!  Too much time has flown by and Noah is already 11 days old today. He has gone from strength to strength and has had so many graduations I thought I had better write them all down to keep track. Here we go:

• He graduated from Ventilator to CPAP at 11 hours old
• He graduated from TPN (IV Feeds) alone to TPN plus colostrum at 2 days old
• He graduated from 2 hrs to 4 hrs off CPAP twice a day by 5 days 
• He graduated from 0.5 mls of breast milk gradually increasing to 5 mls by 10 days old

When he gets to 10 mls every 2 hours he will be on full feeds for his size and his central line which they feed him the TPN, can come out. That will be a great day indeed because that means he has less chance of getting an infection which is something that us mums in NICU dread. It makes them very sick and they lose weight and their temp's go up and we don't want one of those. Anyhow he is going up one ml every 12 hours at the moment so that means that if he keeps tolerating his feeds he will be on 10 mls in 2 and a half days!!!

Kim is pumping milk like a champion as well, we have already filled up our freezer with milk, so yesterday we went and bought a deep freezer to store all her milk in. The plan is to store the first two weeks worth of milk at the hospital for Noah because the first two weeks is very rich in nutrients and fat and all the lipids that he needs to line his digestive tract etc. Then after that we need to store the rest of the milk here at home and take him a fresh bag of milk everyday. That should be no problem seen as how he is on 60 mls per day at the moment and Kim is pumping approximately 1200 mls per day.

We love our little star so much it hurts and we go up to the hospital twice a day for 3 hours at least. We have spent a whole day there and we were so tired it wasn't funny. The last thing we need is to get sick when we have to be there for our baby, so we are limiting it to the two visits. Today is the first time we will only visit once (will be a big visit i think!) because we are waiting for the delivery of the deep freezer and that could be anytime this morning.

We cannot believe how blonde this little man is!! Kim has dark brown hair and brown eyes and olive skin and the donor is the same but with hazel eyes. Kim was fair when she was little too, but it was a shock to see him so fair, when all along we were expecting a little monkey and we got this golden haired beautiful bundle! He is so cute and all the doctors and nurses don't think we are just being biased because he is ours.... they all agree!