Kayla is over a week old!

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You'll have to forgive the lack of updates; it is amazing how much pumping and driving to the hospital can take up an entire day and make you exhausted :) Kayla is a week and 2 days today. It was this time last week that I came home from the hospital but it seems like ages ago. I am in awe of parents who have their babies in the NICU for months - I simply can't fathom it. So she has been in for 9 days but she has made such good progress. To leave the NICU there are four requirements - gaining weight, breathing on their own, eating on their own and maintaining body temperature. She is gaining weight little by little. We aren't sure what her lowest weight was but she was 5 lb 9 oz last night at 11pm. This is two ounces more than she was born at! She has been breathing on her own for a while and the breathing rates have been normal for over 3 4 days. She has been out of the icolet since Friday so that means she has been maintaining her own body weight since then. So... her last test to pass is eating on her own. She's been taking food from a bottle for a while but it has been supplemented by IV nutrition until Friday night. Then on Saturday she was free from all tubes except her feeding tube and sensors. So that means that she is getting the amount of food from milk and formula that she needs. For the first few days she was having her food increased, there were two issues - one was that she wasn't digesting all the food being given to her - it would either sit in her stomach undigested or she would spit it up. Today her residuals (amount of food undigested) was just a trace amount and she has only been spitting up like a healthy baby would. The other issue was that she would only finish half a bottle and then stop eating so the rest would have to be given by tube. This is her last issue to overcome. They say she just tires out while eating. She needs to be eating and digesting on her own for three days before she will go home. Right now, the nurses have her on a schedule of 2 bottle feedings then 1 tube feeding. It will stay like this until she finishes the bottle feedings completely. We feed her 2-3 times a day and about 50% of the time she finishes the bottle and the rest of the time she eats about half and then the rest has to be tube fed. She is close to coming home but this last step could take a while.

On the home front, getting used to pumping has been and experience in itself. I haven't had here breastfeed once so my body is trying to learn to lactate by a machine rather than the baby. Up until Friday, the lactation process has been EXTREMELY frustrating and guilt ridden. They would tell me that she was digesting the breast milk better than the formula but they were working her up to feedings of 46 ccs and I was producing 30 or less at each pumping. Part of it I think was my body being slow to catch on, part of it has been the stress, and we are pretty sure the other part was the pump we had. They sent us home from the hospital with attachments for a hospital grade medela pump. Jose rented a hospital grade pump on the day we got home. The pump was making my nipples get huge and sore. It wasn't increasing my milk production and was just over all frustrating. It would end up the the pump wouldn't get any more milk out but I could hand express more on my own. One morning I tried my Avent hand pump and got out more than I had been getting from the hospital grade pump. While this was great, it was going to be a huge pain to pump 8 times a day with the hand pump. Avent makes an electric version of the hand pump that people on Amazon seemed to love. The thing that sucks about pumps is that once you open the box, you cannot return it. Jose was so great. I was getting soooo frustrated and so jose researched the pump and we decided to get it. I LOVE the Avent ISIS IQ DUO! It is a little more than the pump in style, but in my sitution, it was WELL worth it. I didn't intend to get an electic pump because I planned on having all but one feeding a day being breast fed. Jose read that the Avent pump has been specifically proven to increase milk production for mom's of premies. With in two days, my milk production is up to 40-60 ccs. This is great because as long as I now maintain or go up, I am covering what she needs for feedings! It is also a little weird to set my alarm for every three hours during the night to pump.

My mom is in town until Wed and it is really nice to have her here. We've been running small errands here and there, but mainly just resting between hospital visits. It is a hard situation but we feel really lucky since we have never had to worry about her not coming home, just when she will.

We can't wait for our little girl to come home!