Marley's NICU Stay

I was going to try and be so good and document day by day in a little journal I started for Marley when I found out I was pregnant, but my days in the NICU flew by so fast! I am just now getting to documenting our stay. So sadly I won't remember little details 😔

Kameron and I had stayed at the hospital for a week straight. We were lucky to be able to get into one of the rooms they have available for parents to stay in for that long! Especially since we were going in every 3 hours to do her cares. However we figured we needed a little get a way from the hospital so Friday November 29th after I was officially discharged, we left for dinner. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be! I was very emotional as it was just being postpartum but I was overwhelmed and anxious and all I could think about was getting back to the hospital to be with my baby! Unfortunately when we got back Marley's IV had gone bad 😔 So they had to try and get a new one. I couldn't handle it, already being emotional from leaving, I couldn't handle my baby being poked. Just the thought of it was making me cry. So I decided to leave and go to our room and cry there rather than in Marley's room.. haha that was the last thing the nurses needed was a crying mom and baby while they were trying to get an IV! Poor Kameron 😬 I left him in there all alone, until they had to try in her head.. then he had to leave too.😭 They poked her 5 times unsuccessfully, and even the NP came in and tried. So at that point they decided to leave the IV out and trial her off the TPN (nutrition through her veins) and see if she could keep her blood sugar up. Buuuut at 2 am when they checked her sugar it had dropped to 30 (they like it above 60). So they needed to restart the TPN. Luckily with just one more poke they got an IV back in her and restarted the TPN. 

On Saturday November 30th, her bilirubin was high so they put her on the bili-blanket. Her bili level then dropped on Sunday where she wasn't actually required to be on the light therapy blanket, but the Doc decided to keep her on it one more day, which was smart since her level was just barely below the treatment level. And then when they checked again Monday morning-it was high again, so she had to stay on it anyways. 

She has always been so cute with her arms and hands when she sleeps!

Monday December 2nd Marley was getting 48ml of breast milk fed through her tube every 3 hours so they trialed turning off her IV TPN again. Her sugars dropped to 52 but the Doc wanted to just recheck in another 3 hours and it came up to 87! But she had to have 2 consecutive blood sugars above 60 to keep the TPN turned off. The next two checks were 47 and 52, but instead of putting her back on the TPN the Doc decided to just add extra calories to my breast milk she was getting through the tube in her nose. The Doctor basically said that she can go home when she learns to eat! So I tried and breast feed her every feeding while she got tube fed and her belly was getting full so she could correlate the two. At this point she was pretty sleepy though which the Doc said at her gestational age is normal for them to be too sleepy to even try and eat. Her bili being high also made her sleepy-so that wasn't much help! My sister in law told me when she had one of her twins in the NICU that one feeding for them is compared to us running a 1/2 marathon! 😳 So we had to be patient and wait for her endurance to build up!

Wednesday December 4th Marley was able to keep her temperatures up with the isolet open so she graduated from the isolet to a crib! We also tried to do a bottle to see if she did any better with it, and she did pretty good! The doc voiced that option, of trying the bottle instead, and told us that "it's not a dictatorship, at least not today... tomorrow it will be" in regards to if we chose to try the bottle or not that day haha. Marley's bili also stayed down and she was able to stay off the bili blanket! 

Our little monkey!

Thursday December 5th marked having our baby girl here with us for one whole week!

Her first outfit!

Her first smile I was able to actually catch! Those are hard things to catch!!

Her one week pictures I took 💓 

She has always been such a smiley, happy girl, but she must have known she was under the camera that day because when I was taking pictures of her she was the most smiley we had ever seen! Haha it was so cute!

Saturday December 7th Marley's intake increased from 25% to 38%! Goal was 80-85%. We were hopeful to be able to go home within the next 7-10 days but were also keeping in mind that babies can do really good but then wear themselves out and plateau for a while 😬 But we were crossing our fingers she didn't! And exactly 10 days later we got to go home!

My favorite of her preemie outfits!! So stinkin cute!!

Her squishy cheeks!

Friday December 15th at exactly 6:50pm Marley pulled out her NG tube 😜 haha I know, kind of a random thing to remember, but Marley was eating close to 80% of her feedings and the doc said we couldn't pull her tube out but if she pulled it out to leave it out and we would trial it! But she had to go 48 hours from when her tube came out and keep her eating percentage up as well as continue to gain weight! That's why I remembered the exact time😂 So the timer began! 😜

Saturday December 16th when the Doctor did morning rounds, he told us that if we wanted to room in that night that we could potentially go home the next day! We were so surprised! Rooming in is when you stay the night in one of the family stay rooms in the NICU, but with your baby in the room with you-still hooked up to all the monitors and everything but it's kind of like how your first night in the hospital would have been if your baby didn't have to go to the NICU-except with all the monitors 😜 

Getting her last bath!

And soaking up the heat under the warmer!

We did the car seat study as well where Marley had to sit in her car seat strapped to a simulation seat of a car for 90 minutes while still hooked up to monitors to make sure she didn't desat (her oxygen level didn't drop).

She passed with flying colors! Thank heaven because if you fail that, you don't get to go home! 😱 And I was sooooo ready to go home! I was in the NICU day in and day out, and was pretty tired of it! haha We stayed there for the majority of the time, but every once in a while did go home for a few nights when they needed the room for another family. Even though we live close to the hospital, we chose to stay as much as we could so I could go in around the clock and work on feeding Marley! So those rooms get reeeeeeal small when that's your space for like 10 hours a day!

So the night came and we had our sleep over! 

At 2 or 3 in the morning after I got done feeding Marley and was burping her, her oxygen monitor dropped to 30% (above 90 is normal) So you can imagine all the nurses running to our room! It was so weird though because it dropped to 30 but then pretty immediately came right back up to 90, I was convinced that it was a misreading because she was totally responsive the whole time, just looking up at me, she never turned blue or grey and if it had been a legit drop-it would have taken her some time to recover from a 30 O2 %! But it popped right back up 🙏 but the nurse had to document and report it to the Doc. I was so scared that it was going to hinder our going home! 😞 Which don't get me wrong, if I had felt like it was a legit desat I would have been more than willing to stay and make sure nothing wacky happened again, but since she had gotten off bipap 13 hours post birth, up to that point, she hadn't had any oxygen issues what so ever! And we were having issues with the monitor as it was... So the doc addressed it that morning when he did rounds and wasn't totally convinced either but just said we would have to stay if it happened again during the day... but it didn't!! So all day we just hung out and made sure she was still eating 80% and gaining weight and at about 4pm the doc came in and said we could go!! 🎉

So we headed out for our first official night at home! I was so ready to get out of the NICU but was so scared not having Marley hooked up to all the monitors and constantly knowing her heart rate, respirations, and oxygen saturation! 😬 But she did okay, and heck she's still alive! 😜 She actually did much better once we got home! I don't know if it was because I was more relaxed or what but her eating took off and she did amazing! I was still a little nervous for her first doctors appointment because the Doc said if she had lost weight she would have to be readmitted 😬 So I was hoping and praying and crossing everything I could that she had gained weight!! And she did! She weighed 6lb 9oz at her week appointment! So we got to be home sweet home for Christmas! There is truly no place like home!

And we are crossing our fingers that next time we bake a little longer!! 😜