Elyse is now 33 weeks corrected -- according to the pregnancy e-mails I'm still getting, babies at this stage in the womb should be putting on about half a pound a week. So she's doing a pretty good job of keeping up with her peers, which is positive. Today she weighed in at 1300g, or 2 pounds 14 ounces. Now that she's a little older, her feedings have changed to every 3 hours instead of every 2. And since she is tolerating her feedings well, they are increasing by 1mL every six hours.
At the hospital they like to tell parents to plan for their baby to come home roughly around the original due date. Some may be a little earlier, and some a little later. So going by that theory, she still has about 7 weeks to go. Seems like so far away, but at the same time she still has a lot to accomplish in that time. In order to be discharged, she needs to:
- be at least 35 weeks (corrected age)
- be heavy enough to meet car seat requirements (4lbs minimum)
- move from an incubator to open-air cot (i.e. regulate her own temperature)
- take full feeds by mouth
- be off caffeine and brady/apnea free for a minimum of 5 days
Speaking of her brady and apnea episodes, she was having more than usual yesterday, in conjunction with desaturation of her oxygen levels (also known as a
desat). It was fairly unusual for her, until I had her out for kangaroo care and noticed that she sounded a little congested. The nurse ended up suctioning her nose to clear it out, and once that was done her levels bounced right back up and she was stable the rest of the afternoon. They mentioned that it could be from reflux (especially since she had spit up a little bit that morning), or the start of a cold. Fortunately when I was back today, she sounded much clearer and her stats were stable, so hopefully that means it was nothing serious.
No new photos from today, but a fellow preemie mom shared this recently, and I thought it was really beautiful, and a great inspiration:
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