Sophia is 2 weeks or 33 weeks old, depending on how you count

Sophia is doing great! She is gaining weight, she is at 3 pounds, 10 ounces now. She is off the light for jaundice, is up to full feeds and off her IV.  On Sunday she suprised us by taking a feeding from a bottle! The next day she breast fed! What a champ! This is a picture of Gary, her nurse on Sunday, giving her her first bottle. Sophia opens her eyes big when she eats, like she is amazed by how it all works.

I’m not sure what all else to say. There is a lot to say, but also, there is a lot to do, so there isn’t much time. Between pumping milk for Sophia and going to the hospital to be with her, there isn’t much time left in the day. (If you have emailed or called and I haven’t gotten back to you, this is why!) Hmm, some highlights are:

- Sophia is VERY cute and sweet. I’m not sure if the pictures can show this well enough, so you will have to believe me, she is really VERY cute and sweet.

- All of what you think you know about babies is different for preemies. Like for one thing, the nurses have use a pacifier, bottle feeding and breast feeding all at the same time. Haven’t they read about nipple confusion? (If you are a guy, I’m not kidding, this is a real thing.) But for preemies, the rules are different. They don’t know how to suck and having a pacifier to practice with helps them learn. Using the breast and bottle at the same time is necessary since they don’t have a lot of energy and they aren’t very efficient at breast feeding. Sophia lasts about 5-10 minutes on the breast before she is completely worn out. Then we switch to the bottle, which is much easier for her. Using the bottle helps her practice her sucking and the suck-swallow-breathe combination that will help her with breast feeding in the long run. So, I had to read a new book or two and ask a lot of questions. It is making more sense with each day.

- Sophia will be in the hospital until she can keep a stable body temperature, consistently feed without the feeding tube and not have breathing pauses/heart rate drops. It is hard to know how long this will take, so I focus on each day and how she is doing for the day. Mostly, she does great. Today, she is looking a little pale and might be getting anemic, since some babies have a hard time making enough red blood cells. They can help her with this, though, it’s not a big problem.

- My favorite thing to do with Sophia, well, tied with the feeding part, is Kangaroo Care. The first study about this came out of a hospital in South America. They didn’t have ICUs or fancy equipment for preemie babies. They placed the babies on their Mother’s chests, skin-on-skin, and wrapped them up. The Mother’s body kept the babies warm and also helped regulate their heart rate and breathing. Pretty amazing, huh? Sophia’s doctor ‘prescribed’ Kangaroo Care. I hold her this way at least twice a day and it is an amazing feeling. Sophia gets into such a deep and peaceful sleep, sometimes I check the monitors to be sure she is still breathing!

- The nurses count Sophia’s age in gestational weeks still. She is now 33 weeks, meaning 2 weeks since she was born and she was born when I was 31 weeks pregnant. This sounds strange, didn’t they pick up on that whole birthing thing? But the gestational age is the most helpful. Sophia isn’t making progress on milestones for a 2-week-old full-term baby, she is making progress on milestones for a baby still in the womb. For example, beginning to learn the suck-swallow-breathe thing comes at 32-34 weeks and real ear cartlidge will come at 35 weeks. (Right now, her ears sometimes stay put folded in an odd way against her head. It is very strange!)   For her first year, her pediatrician will use her corrected age, which would be her real age, minus the 2 months she was premature. When Sophia is 6 months old, she will act more like a 4 month old. After the first year, she will catch up and we won’t need to do funny things with her age anymore.

- Besides that, I spend most of my life pumping milk for Sophia. Since this is a co-ed kind of blog with work folks and lots of  friends-of-friends, I won’t get into any kind of detail. In general, it is a pretty cool thing, to be able to provide for her this way, since there are other things I can’t do for her now. The nurses are very supportive and if I fall behind, they are sure to let me know! My not-so-favorite part is the pumping during the night. If I’m going to have enough milk to keep up with Sophia’s feedings, I need to pump round-the-clock. The motivation for getting up is a little harder, when you are hanging out with a machine instead of a baby, but then again, the machine always goes back to sleep when I’m done.  Speaking of pumping, it is time to pump again, so I need to go.

I’ll try to write more later. I hope everyone is doing well!