Tues 15 Nov

Still putting on weight - up to 3 lb. 13 oz. now, only 6 oz. behind Ben!  I'm hoping to catch him before we're out of the NICU, though that means I'm gonna need to up my game in terms of digesting - I'm doing better, and even my residuals are at least partially digested, but I have to start moving things through the pipes better.

Bit of a minor scare this morning - when Nurse Sandy measured my belly it had gotten really swollen so they did an X-ray and ran some tests to see what was going on, and found out that I had a lot of air backed up in my stomach.  That's apparently common on CPAP (and helps explain why I haven't been digesting all my food - glad it's not all my fault!) but should normally start coming out on its own.  So they changed my IV fluids, dropped my feedings down from 28ml to 24ml, and between those changes and the tests, got things moving so I was passing a lot of that gas later in the day.  By the time Nurse Samantha took over in the evening, my belly was back to its normal size.

Mom visited in the afternoon while all this was going on and was a little worried but I tried to relieve her by waving:

Later when Dad came by my stomach was looking better but I was having some desat problems, mainly because they couldn't figure out exactly what level of oxygen to put me on since 22 was not enough but 23 or 24 was causing my oxygen sats to get too high.  I love messing with the nurses and RRTs like that!

Because of my desats and my belly I was a little cranky and did NOT enjoy getting waken up by Dad to do my temperature and diaper change.  I started crying until he gave me my pacifier, which I know calms me down but is also a little bit challenging when I'm trying to keep my alarms from going off - how am I supposed to remember to (a) breathe, (b) keep my heart beating, (c) digest my food, AND (d) suck on a pacifier, all at the same time?

However, I was up for the challenge since I really DO like sucking on the pacifier, and actually even when Dad took his hand away to see if I still needed it (after I had calmed down and gotten my oxygen saturation back up) I kept holding it there myself.

So Nurse Samantha decided it was probably good to leave it in and swaddled me up with the pacifier still held in there by the blankets.  All in all I had a busy day so was happy to go back to sleep and get some rest!