Day 90 - Visit from Grammy and Grampy

Chloe's departure to Michigan will be tomorrow at 6:30am. I get to ride the in the ambulance and Dave will follow behind. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive. Unfortunately, there's not a Ronald McDonald house but we were able to secure an apartment right next to the hospital through the 7th. Hoping we won't need it that long! It's within walking distance from the hospital so that will be really convenient. I'll stay there as long as Chloe's there and Dave and Solana will visit on the weekends.

My parents arrived late last night. We put aside worrying for the day and spent some great Grammy and Grampy time before leaving for Michigan. We had breakfast at Cracker Barrel this morning (yum!) and then headed over to the hospital. We had a fantastic visit! I figured my parents would feel uncomfortable doing kangaroo care but wanted them to hold Chloe. Fortunately, our nurse offered to dress Chloe in an outfit, bundle her up, and take her out for family time! I wished I had brought some of the cute clothes my sister and Mom had bought her but she was so bundled up that you can't see them in the pictures, anyway. Plus, they lifted the restriction on children so Solana got to visit Chloe, too!!! She was beside herself with excitement but some how managed to reign it in and be quiet and still (except for her trembling with excitement :-)



















































My parents are getting their first peek at Chloe. My dad has never seen her before! My mom hasn't seen her in a couple of months!

















We were there a few minutes when we learned the restriction on children had been lifted. Dave and Solana were in the waiting area outside and got to come in. Solana was so excited! She's just approaching the isolette above. In the picture below she and my mom are waiting for the nurse to take Chloe out of the isolette. I caught my mom blinking but check out the look on Solana's face! She's soooo excited!

First kiss from big sister, Solana. This picture makes me want to cry!

Day 89 - Michigan

Well, they checked Chloe's eyes again yesterday and her right eye continues to get better. This is great. But her left eye still has a lot of blood so they can't see what's going on in there. They're worried enough that they want to send Chloe to William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan. She'll probably leave tomorrow by ambulance and be seen on Monday. They'll do an ultrasound to try and get a better idea of what's going on in there before they decide to do a vitrectomy. The eye doctor seems to have the attitude that they'll do the surgery but there's a chance that they'll getter a better look with the ultrasound and decide they don't need to do the surgery. Please help us pray that this is what happens. We have all weekend! The doctor said her stay could be as short as a few days (if they decide she doesn't need surgery) or as long as a month (if they do the surgery).

Fortunately, my parents are coming to town tonight for a week so they can help out with Solana when Dave and I travel with Chloe. Thank God for them.

Day 88 - Feeling Thankful

Well, Chloe gained a whopping 10grams last night (sarcasm). They increased her feeds to 10cc's per hour and she's still getting 4 extra calories from elecare. And I'm still sending over hindmilk for her. It seems like she should be packing on the ounces...but I won't dwell on her lack of weight gain too much. They do say she should be gaining 1/2 to 1 ounce per day and that is definitely not happening. They hesitate to push her too hard, though, because of her history of intestinal problems and I agree with that. I just need to keep having faith (which I do - for the moment) that she'll start gaining weight soon enough.

In the meantime I'm thankful for every day that I visit Chloe and see her bright-eyed, breathing on her own, pooping in her diaper, sucking her pacifier, etc. The lack of "bad stuff" is such a good thing to have. Every time I go in for kangaroo care I can't help but kissing the top of her fuzzy little head. She's SUCH a sweetheart! I love her I love her I love her!

I think I'm feeling the Thanksgiving spirit today. Right now I'm so thankful we're living in such a great place. One wonderful thing about living in Ohio during this time is all the genuinely kind people we're surrounded by. Solana and I visited our new dentist's office a couple of weeks ago and loved the ladies there (I usually decide how much I like a dentist's office based on how nice the people are). They acted like we were old friends from the moment we walked in the door. Of course, the dentist asked Solana if she had siblings and...well...he got the whole story. I'm not sure how I talked so much while getting my teeth cleaned but I chatted with the hygenist quite a bit and shared Chloe with her. Yesterday we received a beautiful card and very generous grocery gift card from them! What a shock! (If you need a dentist in Centerville, by the way, I highly recommend Alex-Bell Dentistry.) Does this sort of kindness exist everywhere or were we just plopped into the perfect place for the challenges with which we were about to be faced? I wonder...

Dave and I aren't used to accepting generosity from other people. We usually want to say, "Oh no, it's ok. Thank you, though." We're learning how to just say, "Thank You," because people really do just want to be kind and helpful. And, like it or not, we're the people having a hard time - for now.

Obligatory Diaper Post

So, after reading a few premie blogs I decided I'd be negligent if I didn't post the following pictures. I've actually meant to for quite a while but just haven't taken the time. After seeing the same on other blogs I finally decided to get my rear in gear and post them. Here are Chloe's cute-as-can be diapers:

And here's my first white hair. Compliments of Day 19 and Chloe's abdominal surgery. I found it a couple of days after the surgery and have been meaning to share this picture, as well. (I actually found a white hair in my eyebrows the day after laser ablation surgery when I was pregnant but don't think that one counts since I just plucked it. I'm going to let this one stick around...) I thought it was kind of funny that I'm actually getting white hairs from this. I always thought that was just a wives tale!

Day 87 - Eyes Look Better

The Opthamologist examined Chloe's eyes this morning and was "encouraged" because her right eye looks "dramatically better." He still sees some blood in her left eye and will be back to check them again on Monday. He said that a future procedure is still a possibility but no trips to Michigan for now. I'll take this. We could have gotten a much worse report! I called Dave at work to let him know and heard him take a big breath and let it out in a big sigh of relief. That's exactly how I feel. We've been on pins and needles the last couple of days. Now we can put off our next worry session until Sunday or so.

Chloe's still hanging in there on her high flow. They had reduced her to 2 liters flow on her nasal canula but I noticed that she was breathing extremely fast when I was holding her Sunday night. She appeared to be restful and wasn't fussing or anything. She was just consistently breathing 90-110 breaths per minute. This concerned me since she lost weight Sunday. Breathing 110 breaths per minute is HARD! I tried to breathe along with her as I held her and couldn't even keep up for one minute. I was pooped! The nurse practitioner kind of laughed when I told that. She said that babies naturally breathe three times faster than adults. There are just certain things that they can still do that we can't (like hold their breath until their O2 saturation drops below 90% - our bodies just won't let us do that) so while it's really hard for me to breathe that fast it's not quite the same experience for her. Even so, they decided to change her flow back up to 3 liters. They knew they were pushing her with the fast weaning and decided to pull back just a bit. Her numbers looked much better last night!

She seems to be dropping a bit of weight. In the last two days she went from 1410 grams on Saturday to 1390 Sunday and then 1380 grams last night. This is NOT the direction we want to be heading! Fortunately, she's handling her feeds well and pooping a-plenty. We know the plumbing is working and that's a very good thing. We just need some of that milk to go towards growing!

Day 85 - ROP Continues

Today's eye exam didn't go as we had hoped. The ROP doesn't seem to care that they did laser surgery. It's continuing on. They started Chloe on some new eye drops. These are steroid drops that they say could possibly help to stop the ROP. They're going to try those until Wednesday or Thursday and if they don't work she may possibly need another laser surgery or maybe a more complicated surgery.

I didn't get to talk to the opthamologist but I believe that the more complicated surgery is vitrectomy. My nifty little brochure, "A Parents' Guide to Their Premature Baby's Eyes" tells me that, "If the retina detaches, removal of the vitreous (vitrectomy) and lens may be needed." I think this is a real possibility. In addition to the scariness of that - Chloe would be moved to Detroit for the surgery. As in Detroit, Michigan.

Nothing against Michigan. I just really really don't want to go there right now and for this reason.

How We Do It

As I walked out of the hospital the other day I ran into another mother that I had met at Miami Valley. We chatted about why we each had moved to Children's and I learned that her 5 month-old little girl moved over because she had to be trach'd. Of course, the first thing I thought was, "My nightmare from two weeks ago. She is living it," and felt soooo bad for her. But what stood out to me was how OK she was with it! She didn't start crying or seem defeated when she told me. Suddenly, I found myself transported into the position of other people who find out that I have a daughter in the NICU. I wondered, "How does she do it? Five months? Trach'd?" This really got me thinking. People sometimes ask me, "How do you do it?"

Before becoming the mother of a 1lb 7oz micropremie I could NEVER have imagined life as the mother of a micorpremie. I couldn't have even fathomed how the parents could bear to leave their babies in the hospital and go home or watch their child undergo hundreds of heel pricks, a dozen blood transfusions, multiple surgeries, weeks of intubation, etc. These things seemed nothing but a nightmare to me. I remember wondering how early my babies could be born without having to stay in the hospital because that would be my goal for keeping the twins inside. I didn't even want to leave them one single day.

Since becoming the mother of a 1lb 7oz micropremie I live one day at a time and can do nothing other than love my daughter, do everything and anything I can for her, and try to maintain a normal-as-possible life for myself and my family. I don't know 'how' I do it. I just do it. I don't exactly have a choice. And it's not over. We will certainly have new challenges to deal with and Chloe has more battles to fight. I don't know 'how' we will handle those but I know for certain that we will. We will square our shoulders and continue on in this new journey that we call "Life." We're not always graceful or elegant and we don't always know the right thing to say or the right way to act. We just keep trying to do our best and trying be the best we can be.

So I think maybe, while I really don't know how she does it, I know why she does it. She has no choice because she loves her daughter. And that's all she can do.