She's Finally Home!!

I can't even say how happy we are to finally have our girl home! We have been waiting 2 years for this day, and it's almost surreal. Yes, I spent the first few days crying because the nursery just reminded me so much of her brother and all the things we wanted for him. But eventually I regained control of myself and kept trucking for our little girl.

She is such a content little baby, nothing seems to bother her except being hungry. But I'm told this is just the calm before the storm, for when she turns full term. She is now around 36 weeks gestation and about 10 weeks old.

We did have a huge scare with her the other day. We took her for her routine ROP eye exam that she has received 3 times already in the past. She has never had an issue with it in the past so I'm not sure what went wrong this time. Apparently, the drops they use are vasoconstrictors which means they constrict the blood vessels in the eyes, and sometimes in other parts of the body. Well our little girl stopped breathing sometime about an hour and a half after her drops, she turned blue and had to be resuscitated. I can't even tell you how scary that was. I keep replaying that in my head, I'll never forget that day. She never crashed like that before, not even during her 9 weeks in the NICU. The last time she was bagged was when she was born. I cried like a lunatic. My poor sweet girl...as if she hasn't gone through enough.

But the good news is that by the time we brought her home it was as if nothing happened. She is doing really well. We are just having some issues with her weight gain, she is only taking about 60 mls of formula per feed whereas she was taking 80 at the hospital. We tried so hard to get her up to 60, I think because she switched to the powder stuff when she was released. They sent us home with the powder stuff. She is on Enfacare by Enfamil which you can only order through a pharmacist and it takes a few days to get in.

Anywho, also during her "crash", they realized she has fluid in her lungs. So we were sent home with a prescription to remedy that with a diuretic for 2 weeks. Apparently this is very common in preemies, but I'm still a bit confused as to how come this wasn't noticed on Saturday when she was released, but it was there on Tuesday when she had her spell.

In any case, it's hard to see her on the diuretic, she is peeing and pooing like there's no tomorrow and we have to be very careful that she doesn't dehydrate. So there'll be lots of blood work and appointments for her coming up, including one to check her electrolytes.

Today was our first day, just her and I. We did some tummy time to strengthen her neck and to give her head a bit of a rest. Her Daddy had to go back to work, and of course I have a full blown cold today. I am so scared she will get it because we were told she can't have any meds. Due to her age, if she gets my cold or gets a fever from having the flu, she has to go in to the ER for blood work to rule out any other infections before they can administer any drugs to relieve her. Poor munchkin...I hope she doesn't get my cold.

We also got her the Angelcare monitor and I have to say, it was the best $170 bucks we ever spent!! I'm actually able to sleep when she is sleeping because I hear the "tick...tick...tick" of the Angelcare, telling me that my little girl is safe and sound in her crib.

Our cats and dog have gotten used to her really well...the cats at first were a little freaked out but now they don't care. The dog on the other hand is SO protective of her, its' like he thinks that she is his baby. :) Cute, but we are VERY cautious with the animals being around her and will be until she's a teenager!! lol...you just never know, as much as we love our fur-babies, we can't depend on trusting them.

So that's that...some minor bumps here or there, but for the most part Anna is doing great. I LOVE being her Mommy and sometimes I sit and just wait for her to wake up so I can see her again. :) We are SO in love with her!!!

M.

She's coming home!!!

I can't believe it!! Tomorrow is the BIG day, our baby is finally coming home! She passed her car seat test, and got some orders for feeding (preemie formula and topping her up etc) and she's all ours!!

I am frantically cleaning the house and trying to tie up some loose ends before she comes. I just can't even say how happy I am, words can't describe it. I know it's going to be a tough and stressful journey but it will also be joyous and happy and incredible!

Thanks everyone for your support!
M.

The countdown has begun!!

So, it looks like Anna will be departing the hospital quite soon! I can't believe it, I honestly thought she had at least 3 more weeks there to grow and learn to feed etc. She took to the bottle within hours of being introduced to it. I would like to email a picture of Anna at age 34 weeks, and eating from her bottle to the lactation consultant at Women's who told me babies don't start bottle feeding until 37 weeks!

Anyhow, that's a whole other post. When she arrived at Oshawa, they reassessed her and within days she was transferred from an incubator to an open cot, same as the ones that babies sleep in bedside after being born. She also had her feeding tube removed after she did about 12 hours of bottle feedings on her own. Anna also gained something like 200 grams in the last 6 days. So lots of things have happened for her in the last few days!

So what is left for Anna to do is the car seat test (she has to sit in it for 90 minutes without having any issues). Also, they took her off the caffeine, which initially was given to her to help her remember to breathe. So she has to go 5 days without it and Saturday will be her 5th day. So they might let us take her home either Saturday or Sunday!!

Yes, you guessed it, I'm sharting myself!! I can't believe they are discharging babies this small!! She is only 4lbs 14oz at this point and just absolutely tiny and so so frail.

We will do our best but I am sure the NICU will have many late night phone calls for the first few weeks she is home! :)

Will keep you all updated on when she comes home! I have a really terrible feeling that she will fail her car seat test. As excited as I am to have her home, I probably wouldn't be too upset because I just don't feel like she is big enough to come home yet. But then the other half of me was ready to take her home 9 weeks ago!!!

M.

Anna is in Level 2!!

So she finally made it! The transfer was done on Thursday morning; we arrived in Oshawa around 2am. We have been really nervous the last few days, you know typical stuff, new surroundings, new nurses, new procedures etc. But I'm finding that as each day passes, it gets better and better. The nurses we have encountered thus far have been wonderful! They are totally supportive of me bottle feeding the breast milk and even supportive of switching to formula one day when we run out of milk. Also, there's no nonsense about not being able to bottle feed until 37 weeks. In fact, they hope to get her home by 37 weeks depending on how fast she picks up feeding.

They will start her today on her first bottle so we'll see how that goes! Upon her being accepted at Oshawa, they immediately switched her feeds to every 3 hours and increased her milk from 24mls to 42mls to compensate for the switch. She has been doing wonderfully on this new routine! She has even gained a bit more weight and is now up to 1983 grams which is about 4lbs and 6oz.

Anna also had her first bath yesterday! Which was well overdue! So things are moving quickly but she is able to keep up just fine. The nurses even take her off her monitors for a few hours at a time because they want us to get used to not depending on the monitors anymore, but instead depending on Anna's cues and recognizing whether or not she's in distress or needs to be reminded to breathe a bit heavier (she never actually stops breathing but breathes shallow sometimes when she's in a deep sleep).

So it's been really great! So far I am loving Oshawa and I am loving that she's so close. She is currently in isolation, which means we have to wear gowns, gloves and masks around her but that's normal protocol for every new transfer just to make sure she doesn't have any infections or germs that have been brought over from the last hospital. This should end sometime on Sunday or the latest Monday, all depending on how fast those staff in the labs get the results back to the NICU. I think at Women's she was only in isolation for 24 hours but they were extremely quick there with that.

Here she is getting her hair washed before her bath time (how cute!!):



M.

Sad Day

We decided today to withdraw our lawsuit. We haven't heard from our lawyer since back in March at which point from what I understood, his expert approved our case and we were just waiting to proceed. We even got a letter from the lawyer after we "approved" to confirm proceeding with the suit. I just don't understand what happened between then and now.

Last month I tried to contact them to get an update. Last month as in August. It has been 2 weeks and I finally received some sort of contact. Now he is saying that his expert did not think there was negligence and they have been looking for another expert that could review our case. They recently found one but it would cost an additional $400 per hour for him to review it. So they would have to take that from our Trust. So we sort of had enough and withdrew our case. They clearly weren't up to the job because he just kept emphasizing how there won't be much 'monetary' gain. That part WE didn't care about but of course he did since he was on a contingency based pay. So I don't know...a part of me thinks that they just didn't want to put the work in, and a part of me wants to believe that maybe there wasn't any negligence after all?? I know he didn't take advantage of us because they are giving us back more than half of our initial retainer fee. I just think he lost his drive for the case after realizing that he's not going to get jack shit for it even if we had an expert agree with us.

I'm not sure what to think but in any case, we withdrew our suit. We still have the College to fall back on in terms of our formal complaint with them. If they come back with nothing then I can safely rest assured that this was just a freak accident because my pelvis was too small. Yes, that will be hard to accept because in a sense then "I" killed my baby without even knowing it. But it might be a bit easier to accept than option b) which is that some fool of a doctor took his life needlessly.

So we'll await the College's 12 month investigation results patiently. In the meantime, trying to stay sane and strong for our little girl just as she has stayed strong for us.

I refuse to be bullied!!

As tough as this journey has been, I never thought the stress would be from the staff of a hospital instead of the health of my baby. Over the last few weeks, the strain has been slowly building up, to the point now where I feel nauseous just thinking about going to that "place". I feel so sad to have my baby there now. I know she is in good hands but for some reason they have really been making things so difficult for me since Anna has gotten better now and she only depends on them to feed and change her when we are not there. They tell us we have to advocate for her and to start getting used to being her primary caregivers etc etc. But when I speak up or ask for things to be a certain way so that I can "parent" her, they give me full blown resistance.

I have seen quite a few babies being bottle fed who were about 34-35 weeks along. I have met a few mothers who have been breastfeeding who are anywhere from 31 to 35 weeks along. So why is it today when I expressed that I will be bottle feeding my babe, the lactation consultant turned on me like a witch casting a spell? It feels like she sabotaged my whole experience that I have been waiting for the last 8 weeks and the more I think about it the more I have the piece of mind to tell her what she did to me.

She basically pulled out this giant nipple which barely fit in Anna's mouth and let us have a go for about 3 minutes before she made me feel like a total failure. Anna by the way was very sleepy so she wanted no part of anything. The LC then sort of bullied me into trying the breast. Here's the reason why I let myself get bullied; she told me that they can start breastfeeding now but if we want to bottle feed then that can't be done until 37 weeks. I understand the whole "low flow" and "self expressing flow" of the bottle vs real nipple, but in terms of suck swallow and breathe, the baby either has that reflex or she doesn't. So what difference would it make if she took the milk from the breast or a very slow flow preemie nipple??? She is such a champ at her soother and just LOVES it. I don't know why they made me feel so horrible and basically made me feel like if I bottle feed then that will delay her from coming home.

I heard some great views from women on 2 different forums, one specifically a preemie forum and have decided to stand my ground. She is 34 weeks now and I have no doubts that we can very slowly start to introduce the bottle. By the way she did have a few sucks at the bottle today and didn't desat or choke. She had a few sucks of my nipple too (although there is no milk coming anymore) but in terms of preference, there was no difference since she was almost fully asleep for both. So I don't know why the LC made it look like she 'hated' the bottle because she was sleeping. She kept giving me these looks...those "see I told you sooo....hmmm should have listened to meee"..but then when I put her on the breast, she left me there with her for a full hour, no crazy looks, nothing. Even though the progress and end result was the same. Couple of sucks and she passed out.

I tell you what, I refuse to ever be bullied again like that!

I hate that place right now and I'm sick of most of the nurses and the lactation consultants and shame on them for bullying NICU mothers who are already so stressed out. Shame on them for kicking me while I am down.

On the plus side, Anna is now up to 4lbs and 1oz and will start her transfer process after her eye exam so most likely Thursday. I hope they have a bed for her and have no more set backs because I don't know how much more I can handle of this place.

M.