Day 96 - Thanksgiving Update

So much has happened the last few days I'm not sure I know where to start! I imagine that I should be writing a post declaring all the things I'm grateful for but I'm not going to. I did a bit of that at Thanksgiving dinner and started crying so I think my heartfelt Thanksgiving speech is already out of my system. Fortunately, for everyone else, only my parents, Dave, and Solana had to endure it ;-)

I think I'll just give the usual update. Tuesday through today (Friday) have been fairly uneventful. Chloe's been doing pretty well on her 1.5liter canula. She was working harder to breathe last night so they did a blood gas (this is a test that has been done on her at least a hundred times and involves a heel prick so they can get a small amount of blood to test levels of gasses [like CO2] in her blood) and a chest x-ray. They had talked about putting her back on CPAP but decided to just keep an eye on her. She's still working a bit harder today than she was before last night but not enough for them to make any changes, yet. Praying that her breathing gets easier for her...

Chloe has a big belly. It always looks like a poochy puppy belly and we've been keeping a close eye on it since her little event on Monday. Dave and I keep asking for poop reports when we're not at her bedside and all the nurses know that we worry about her her digestion. I discovered that Chloe has her own personal baby-style sense of humor about this, which makes me really happy. Twice, we've gone to change her diaper and it's turned into a four diaper extravaganza! Each time we pull the dirty one away she immediately dirties up the new one! Fortunately for me, I make sure to have a new diaper under the dirty one before pulling the dirty one away. If not, I'd have had to change a lot of linens lately! And the whole time Chloe seems as pleased as can be, like she's saying, "You wanted poop Mommy. Here it is!"

Chloe's eyes are still doing well. She's had two bedside examinations since Monday and they tell us that her eyes look, "not too bad." There's still a little blood but definitely less. We want the blood to go away because it can supposedly feed scar tissue and scar tissue pulls at the retina. Both retinas are still attached, though, and that's great! She's still scheduled for her exam under anesthesia in the OR. Monday is our big day. Oh, and I learned today that we're not in the clear from retinal detachment until 10 weeks after her due date - that means 12 more weeks of regular eye exams before we can really breathe a sigh of relief. Poor baby. Those eye exams are brutal.

I also learned that Chloe has had one and possibly two rib fractures in her life. I don't think I knew that but the nurse practitioner pointed it/them out to me last night on her x-rays. We had a whole conversation about how thin Chloe's bones are and how that is really common for micro-premies. (It was really kind of scary to see the thin whispy white lines, that are her ribs, on the x-ray.) I honestly can't remember if I knew about her old rib fracture. Suddenly, it occurs to me that never in my life could I have anticipated a time when my child would be so sick that a rib fracture would be a minor thing that I quickly filed away and forgot about. How crazy my frame of reference has become... Soon enough this will all be a memory and Chloe will be home with us. And I'll be so consumed with her new antics that I'll have to consult my nifty thrifty journal to remember everything from her NICU days...

That's about it for Chloe's update.

My parents and Solana drove up here from Dayton on Wednesday and my mom got to hold Chloe again. She loved it and was terrified at the same time. Chloe kept gagging on her feeding tube and spitting up bits of milk while he held her so I'm sure that didn't help her nerves. I was pumping and my dad fell asleep in his chair, tired after driving from Dayton. My poor mom. She survived, though, and was happy that Chloe kept smiling at her. Chloe LOVES when we baby talk and sing to her. My mom's good at that.

We got up early Thursday morning and attended the America's Thanks giving Day parade in Detroit. (We'll likely never be in Detroit for another Thanksgiving so we decided to check it out.) Solana wasn't sure about it at first but then got into it when they started throwing candy from the floats. It was lots of fun but COLD! After the parade we split up. My mom and I were dropped off at the hospital while Dave, my Dad, and Solana checked out of their hotel and picked up our food from Kroger. We ordered a fancy schmancy "Fully Cooked" Thanksgiving feast from Kroger. We scheduled our pickup for noon and timed it just perfectly so that Dave could pick up the food right at noon. After getting the food he swung by the hospital to pick us up. We were huuungry! But as we got in the car I noticed there wasn't a food smell... Dave pointed out that the food was in the back. Hmmm. Ok. We got home and opened our big box to find our fully cooked meal to be a fully...REFRIGERATED meal! What?!? The turkey was wrapped up like they are when they're raw and had to be baked for two hours! Seriously, though, how lame is that? We all thought it would be hot from the deli. It was all pre-packaged stuff. We could have just bought all that stuff off the shelves. Oh well. We pigged out on pistachios while we waited and my mom and I ran back to the store for green bean casserole ingredients since there were no veggies in the meal. Fortunately, we were in the apartment so we actually had a kitchen and utensils, cookware, etc. In the end we had a really nice Thanksgiving dinner, all things considered. Certainly not the Thanksgiving we intended but we were together and that made it good.

They all left back to Dayton a few hours later. Chloe and I are on our own in Michigan. We snuggled for a few hours last night and again today. She's going to be so spoiled after this week! In fact, I'm about to get my clothes out of the dryer and head back to the hospital for another snuggle with my girl.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!