Our girl is making so much progress and we are incredibly thankful. There are three major milestones she must accomplish prior to graduating from the NICU as well as a list of ten or so tasks she/we must complete together. The three milestones are breathing on her own, regulating her own temperature, and eating 8 bottles/day. The list of tasks looks like this:
This week, we completed our NICU care and CPR class as well as got a few things in order that were recommended there. We now have an emergency station set up in our house, including a landline, should something ever happen. After hearing a few stories from class, the last thing we would want to do in the event of an emergency is be scrambling to find our cell phones or be worried that they weren't fully charged, so we went ahead and bought an old fashioned phone that plugs into the wall and set that up with our emergency station. We also put together a few finishing touches on her nursery and got some diapering essentials organized.
Yesterday was a huge day for Madelynn. She hit 1800 grams and was moved to an open crib one day early and got her pulse oxygen monitor completely taken off. She has been maintaining her temperature with no issues since then, so we can hopefully check two of the three major milestones off the list. She has also been attempting to take bottles almost every care time (every three hours). As of today, she is completing about two bottles per shift, or four bottles per day, and drinking some of the others...just not fully completing. This is great news, so great that the nurse practitioner has warned me it may be as early as 7-10 days for her to come home! That is of course if everything goes well and her endurance improves steadily this week...and if she passes remaining tests. We have a few more tasks left to complete on the checklist, so I am frantically trying to get all the things I need in order to get those done. (Side note...she is still not nursing, still working on that one...ugh).
(snoozing away in her new open crib/bassinet)
Today, Madi is officially four pounds! It's crazy to think she has gained a pound since birth, and equally crazy to think she might be going home pretty small. I have a feeling we won't be traveling much because I'm going to be so paranoid with her in the car seat once we actually do get discharged. But we shall see, trying not to jump the gun or get too excited, but goodness gracious it would be wonderful for her to be home and not having to travel back and forth every day.
(Eek! Four pounds!)
All in all it was a good week for her. I can not wait to have my girl home, to have our family all in one place, and to worry more about snuggles and loves than monitors and numbers and statistics.
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