Brown or Blue??

Look at Noah all bright eyed and bushy tailed!! Its really hard to tell if he has already got brown eyes. They might be really dark blue but we just can't tell! Great news Noah put on another 20 grams  (now 760gms) so now he is past his birth weight and only in 17 days!! They said it would take about 3 weeks! He is off CPAP 24 hours a day now and so all he has left to do until he comes home is grow!! He might be moved from ICU to ICU2 (a step down in care) and thats a good thing! Just waiting for a cot to become available I think. From there, when he reaches a kilo, he will go another step down to Special Care instead of ICU!!! Isn't he just adorable!

On The Up And Up

Great News!!! Noah has put on 40 grams in the past two days since they began fortifier mixed in with his milk which means he is only 10 grams away from his initial birth weight.  What a champion!  They started the first day with only half fortifier so his little stomach could tolerate it and by the second day he was on full fortifier mixed in with his 10 mls every two hour feeds.

Noah had his second head ultrasound done and the results are in .... Completely normal ... no bleeds, no complications.  Our little boy just keeps powering on.

He is off CPAP for six hours twice a day.  The doctor considered keeping him on four hours but decided that he uses way too much energy trying to get the prongs out of his little nose when they are on so better out than in!  Noah in his two weeks and two days is already dictating to one and all what he wants! Go our little man!

2 Weeks Old Today!!!

The Ups: Noah has been very good at learning how to suck his dummy, he has been on full feeds for his size for 24 hrs and this morning his central line came out!!! His temperature is perfect, his blood pressure is fine and his oxygen saturations are really good and he is up to 6 hours off his CPAP now without a worry! 
                                                                                             

The Downs: Last night he was weighed as he is every 2 days. He lost 30 grams so he is back to 700 grams. The doctors and nurses have been asked every question under the sun about why, is this bad, what happened, is he getting sick, etc etc and the stock answer is no. It just happens sometimes. He obviously burned more calories than he ate, even though he is on full feeds. Sometimes the body burns calories developing the organs. There is alot going on in his little body at the moment. His brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver etc are all still maturing and that takes energy. So at least that is some consolation. He is developing on the inside! Still we were pretty devastated.                                                                                                                           

The lesson here is to be grateful it isn't anything more serious than a little bit of weight loss. He uses more energy the more time he is off CPAP, but he needs to be weaned from it. Catch 22 situation. He uses more energy having Kangaroo Cuddles, but he needs them to bond to us and there are a load of studies that prove that they do better developmentally if they have them. He uses more energy each time they up his feeds to digest the milk, but he needs to be fed to put on weight. I just think he is at a cross road and this was the changeover from having IV Feeds as well as his milk, to just having milk alone. The good news is that they are going to add a fortifier to his milk which adds calories to his feeds without adding volume. So chubby chub chub, here we come!!!

Photo cuteness!!!

A Weighty Issue...

Great news! Look at his big tummy everyone! Noah has gone up to 7 mls of breast milk every two hours now! They are increasing his feeds every 12 hours by 1 ml.  So this afternoon he will be on 8 mls and tomorrow he will be on 9 mls then 10mls tomorrow afternoon!!!!!!!! That means he will be on full feeds for his size and the central line can come out after he has been on full feeds for 24 hours !!!!!     
                       
When he was born he weighed 750gms. After birth it is completely normal for babies to lose weight and Noah's weight plummeted to only 640gms. That was quite distressing for us to see him grow even smaller.                                                                                                                           

But once he started on his feeds he put on 30gms in two days. They weigh him every two days and the target is to gain 15-30gms. Noah has put on 30gms every two days. So he went from 750gms to 640gms, then to 670gms then to 700gms and now he is 730gms. They said it normally takes about 3 weeks for them to get back to their birth weight and Noah has almost done it in a week!!!                                                                                                                                    

He loves his tucker. They feed him through a little tube that goes into his mouth and right down into his stomach. Before they put the milk through the line they pull back on the syringe to see if there is any undigested milk in his tummy first. There is never any there because he gobbles it all up! He loves his mama's milk!!                                                                                              

They feed him through the tube because premature babies haven't got a good sucking reflex. But I think that Noah will prove them all wrong (as usual) because he has a little dummy and if you hold it in place he sucks that dummy like there is no tomorrow!!

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!