Hurdles Surpassed

One of my friends who had had a child in the NICU gave me advice a few months ago, to ask the NICU nurses regularly what Katie needed to do next to get to go home.  That way everyone knows what needs to be focused on and you can take it one step at a time but always move forward.  I took this advice to the letter and started thinking about these little steps as hurdles.  Here are the hurdles that Katie passed in the first four days.

1. Making it to full term!  She didn’t have any extra problems caused by coming early!
2. Screaming and Pink!  She passed this hurdle immediately, she didn’t need oxygen, she didn’t need emergency surgery, and she didn’t need medicine to stabilize her heart.
3. Oxygen saturation.  This is a measurement of how effective her lungs and heart are working together to get oxygen through her body.  Her saturation fluctuated a little in the beginning and then stabilized in the perfectly healthy range.  This is continuing to amaze the doctors.  Babies with this heart problem usually have lower levels, this is proving that even though she has a heart defect, her heart is still working very well.
4. Other organs.  Her abdomen was swollen when she was born and they were concerned there was an intestine blockage.  It turned out to be nothing, and all her other organs were functioning normally as well.
5. Eating.  Katie was sucking her lips and wanting to eat very early.  I started pumping and nursing at about six hours.  She took to it like a champ. 
6. Temperature stabilization.  They needed her to maintain her body temperature on her own.  She was having some trouble so they kept her bundled up for about 24 hours.  Mike and I also said a few words about the fact that her crib was in a draft and we were freezing too.  They moved her crib soon afterwards and she did much better.
7. Heart stable.  All babies are born with holes in their heart that help when then they are in the womb and being supported by the umbilical cord.  These holes close very early after birth.  The doctors watched Katie’s heart closely to make sure the holes did close on their own, and that when they closed they didn’t cause extra problems with her main heart defect.  Everything went well during this process too.
8. Blood glucose.  This became a little troublesome.  They put her on an IV right at birth to keep her nutrition up.  We then had to slowly take her off the IV and make sure her blood sugar levels stayed in the normal range from my feedings.  This was a little daunting with regular foot pricks and stressful for me to make sure she ate well every feeding even though my milk wasn’t in yet.  This process took about 12 hours and she passed every test.
9. Peeing.  For some reason our little angel holds it in.  They were worried she would get dehydrated if she went home.  This was annoying because she would have a wet diaper that weighed more than they ever usually saw, but they wanted 6 small ones rather than 2 huge ones.  Also, my milk wasn’t in yet.  This started the supplementation process.  After every feeding, even still, I have to top her off with one extra ounce.

After these hurdles, she got to go home!!!