Benjamin's Life: Oinker!

Whatever it was that was supposed to click has apparently clicked. It helps, I think that they started him on Prevacid (I always want to say percocet...but it's definitely not) to treat him for reflux. Apparently reflux makes babies absolutely miserable. When the partially digested milk starts going back up the esophagus and into the throat it annoys a nerve that affects the heart. In preemies, the heart burn that reflux cause can make the infant go into bradycardia. Since Benjamin was having so many bradys the doctors decided to do a trial of Prevacid, which doesn't cure reflux but treats the heart burn, to see if that would help stop the bradys and help him want to nurse a little bit more. They started the Prevacid on Friday, June 22nd.

On Saturday, June 23rd, Benjamin ate 51 mL in one feeding! It was his first time ever nursing enough to get 100% of his feeding without supplementing with the NG tube. In fact, he over-nursed since a full feeding for him was only 48 mL. Everyone was very proud of him and he did such a good job that the following day we were asked to try for three feedings.

June 24

Happy Birthday to me

My birthday was pretty low-key this year. Andrew and I spent a little time in the wee hours of the morning watching the mountain burn (just after returning from the hospital). Andrew got up with the girls in the not-so-wee hours of the morning and let me sleep in until it was time to get ready to go. All three of them woke me up by singing Happy Birthday.

We dropped the girls off at my friend Tracy's house and then went to the hospital and then I spent most of the rest of the day napping while Andrew took care of the girls and packed up some of the bookshelves in the office and carted a bunch more stuff from downstairs to the garage. We're trying to figure out how big of a truck we'll need to haul our things across the country.

The girls helped Daddy make dinner—they heated up canned soup and make baking powder biscuits—and then after dinner we had cupcakes. Mine was a fancy cupcake that Karen had picked up for me from a place called The Sweet Tooth Fairy; everyone else had cupcakes that Sister Christensen had brought over the day before. Or maybe the day before that. All my days are blending together.

It was just a little party—Andrew, the girls, and me—but it was practically perfect. What else could you ask for than to be surrounded by the people you love most of all? Oh, I know...

Summery Stuff

It seems as if the world stopped turning 20 days ago. Part of me feels like an eternity has passed since Benjamin was born and part of me feels like he was born yesterday. It seems strange, and almost a little cruel, that everyone around us is carrying on like normal when, for us, life came to a screeching halt and everything is now focused on the baby.

I remember the drive to the hospital the first Saturday after Benjamin was born. We had picked the route by the mouth of the canyon since Orem's Summerfest was going on and they had a parade route blocked off on one of the main roads and construction on another. We left with plenty of time to spare but were met with a sea of break lights when we got to the canyon.

"This isn't happening!" I said to Andrew. "What's going on?"

He didn't know.

We crawled through the traffic and finally were able to see what the hold up was—the Utah Valley Marathon.

One lane of traffic was blocked off as a running path for the marathoners. Police were stopping traffic to let the marathoners cross the street. We could see cars snaking down University Avenue. I just about started to hyperventilate.

"No!" I wailed. "Don't they know I need to see my baby?!"

I willed traffic to speed up. I cursed those stupid marathoners in my mind—how could they be running a stupid race when my world was crashing all around me?! Then I chastised myself for thinking that when I realized that I ran a marathon just last year and that I held up traffic and that probably one of those cars was heading somewhere of extreme importance, like to the hospital to see their baby in the NICU or to rush to the bedside of a dying parent and I hadn't given a second thought about what they might be going through...

Eventually we made it to the hospital and I don't think we were even that late. I was all on edge, though, from that stressful ride that shouldn't have been so stressful (it was certainly self-created stress).

I'm not so bitter anymore, but it does seem strange that life is carrying on without us.

For example, did you know that it is summer outside? I keep forgetting.

Shaken, not stirred

On Thursday we made ice cream. I suppose it's not technically ice cream but it was yummy and easy and fun.

We put 1/2 cup of milk in a quart-sized ziplock bag with 1/2 tsp of vanilla and 1 TBS of white sugar. Then we put that ziplock bag in a gallon-sized ziplock bag, filled that with ice and about 6 TBS of rock salt and then we shook it up. For five minutes. Or more. Or less. Depending on our attention span.

Miriam had a hard time holding onto the bag with her mittens on.

Benjamin's Life: A Roller Coaster

Benjamin's gone from zero to hero in just a couple of days! To think I spent my birthday eve bawling because he wouldn't eat a gosh darn thing and this morning he ate and ate and ate (and then he ate some more) and when we put him on the scale we found that he had eaten 51 grams worth of milk! A full feeding for him is only 48 ml, so he ate 3 ml more than he needed to and he did it all on his own!

The best part is that he kept all his stats up so we didn't hear the alarms go off once the entire feeding (or after)! It was a great visit.

The girls came to see him this morning, too. Rachel suggested that Miriam go in first since last time Rachel went in first. What a sweet, considerate girl she is! Rachel watched through the window while we took Miriam inside.

At first she was very excited to see her brother:

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

From my short experience being 27 I have found that 27-year-olds cry a lot.

As Krystal so wisely divined, we've taken a step backwards with breastfeeding and now it's like we don't do it at all. Last night I couldn't get Benjamin to wake up at all. We didn't even bother doing a test weight for him because I knew he couldn't have eaten anything, since he didn't bother to open either his eyes or his mouth the entire time I was there. It was so frustrating!

I asked Andrew to take the baby and then ran from his bedside, telling our nurse on my way out of the NICU that Benjamin was ready for his feeding. Then I sat in the pump room and cried and then pumped—more than 8 ounces in 7 minutes (eek)—and then cried and then washed the pump stuff while I cried and finally went out to meet Andrew in the lobby. His dad was on his way over from BYU campus, which is right next to the hospital, to help give Benjamin a blessing.

We hadn't asked him to come but for some reason he texted Andrew to ask if we were at the hospital and if there was anything we needed. Funny that he should think to do that the one night that I had I complete breakdown; he's never stopped by to see the baby before and he goes to BYU four nights a week.

I was happy to have a few minutes to collect myself before going back into the NICU. I was also happy that our nurse was a man. His name is Kevin and we've had him three nights this week and he's great. It's also a slightly awkward because NICUs involve a lot of...cleavage. Kevin won't come into our cubicle while I'm nursing or pumping and always announces himself if he's planning on coming in so that I can make sure I'm decent, which is nice. But he also has no advice and offers no assistance in the breastfeeding arena.

But, he also doesn't hover over me when I have a meltdown.

Instead he went in to start the feeding and said to Andrew, "Wouldn't latch on? Figured. He's been pretty sleepy lately." And then he made an appointment for the occupational therapist to visit with us the following morning without saying anything like, "Are you alright, sweetie?" or "Go home and get some rest," or "There, there," which I appreciated because sometimes when I cry I prefer people to pretend that I didn't instead of trying to be sympathetic (because sometimes sympathy just makes me feel worse instead of better). 


Right now I don't cry because of a specific incident—like, it's fine that Benjamin was too tired to nurse; I get that—but because I'm so stressed out about the whole situation in general that it seems there's a daily straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak. 


Sometimes there are multiple straws that break my back everyday. 


I can't help it. I'm one big mess of emotion. And I'm so stressed out. 

Conversations

One day we were driving to the hospital and the traffic was really bad and I was really tired.

"Wow," I said. "The weather is horrible today!"

Andrew looked at me. He looked at the beautiful blue sky and the brilliant, blazing sun.

"Are you tired or something?"

Apparently.

One day we were driving home from the hospital. This time we were in the van because we'd taken the girls with us. When Andrew opened the garage, Rachel was shocked to see that it was empty.

"Where is Grandma?!" she gasped, since Grandma's car was gone.

"She must've gone somewhere," we answered.

"But, where is the van?!" she asked.

"I don't know," we answered. "Where is the van?"

"I don't know!" she cried, clearly concerned. Then, "Oh...we are in the van."

Benjamin's Life: Nursing School

Benjamin has been rocking the nursing scene lately. We've been doing test weights for three days now (four including today) and so far his test weights have been up by 9 and 10 ml (on Sunday), 10 and 13 m (on Monday), and 25 and 10 ml (on Tuesday). He was rather exhausted for his evening feeding yesterday but that's probably because he only had one tube-feeding in between to recover from his huge 25 ml feeding. It was the only way we could see how to work his schedule yesterday, though, since we wanted to go to the parent support group/pizza party/car seat class. We brought the girls with us to do the 4:00 feeding—they hung out in the parent room and watched a movie while Andrew worked and I did Benjamin's cares, and then we all went outside to play by the fountain (which had been turned off by the time we got outside; the girls had fun anyway) until it was time for the support group.

Who are the people in your neighbourhood?

It was a happy day when Benjamin moved into the Level II NICU (June 6). That nursery is full of relatively stable babies, just doing their best to grow and learn enough to go home. The babies are much less prone to tripping their alarms and their cries are usually cries of hunger rather than cries of distress. It's much quieter than the Level I NICU, where alarms are constantly blaring, where new babies are admitted and intubated and where they sometimes have surgery, where the cries are cries of panic and discomfort because who cares about eating when you've been snatched away from your mother and don't even know how to breathe yet.

We loved the calm feeling of Level II the minute we walked through the doors. We were even more happy to see that our neighbouring baby was Jack. We met Jack's parents at our first Tuesday Pizza Support Group. They'd already been in the NICU for six weeks and were sitting, completely relaxed, chatting to everyone like it was totally no big deal.

We'd just been admitted and I had just gotten through holding my baby the second time since being discharged from American Fork Hospital. We were sitting rigidly in our chairs and I'm sure we still had shocked expressions glued to our faces. But Jack's parents shared their story and listened to ours and assured us that the doctors and nurses do a fabulous job and that it doesn't last forever—they were getting ready to go home soon (at long last).

When I saw Jack beside us, I was glad that I'd get to know his mother a little better because she seemed so nice. But then, that very day, our first day in Level II, Jack went home. I was happy for his family but kind of sad for us.

Benjamin's Life: Two Weeks

Having a premature baby is quite a bit different from having a full-term baby.

That's probably the understatement of the year.

Anyway, Benjamin is now two weeks old (as of yesterday) but we don't really think of him as being two weeks old because we're still counting his gestation age. Benjamin is 35 weeks and 5 days old...so just about -1 month old. It's funny that I lose track of how many days old he is because I'm always counting how long I should have been pregnant (and boy do I wish I was still pregnant).

He's still doing just great!