First bath! 7w6d

First bath!! 

54 days old/days in NICU

Weight: 4 lbs 13oz (+20 grams)

Today Ella had her first real bath! She's had sponge baths and been wiped down of course, but this was her first tub bath. Her nurse, Margo, and I did it together. It was pretty uneventful but still fun!

Ella's still on the same amount of oxygen and liters of pressure. We'd hoped that today I could feed on demand but the doctor ordered a Renal Ultrasound (kidney) and we figured it probably wouldn't be a good time to ask. Maybe tomorrow. They ordered the renal ultrasound to see if she had any kidney stones and also because she'd had that minor bladder infection on that Saturday where she got so sick. The nurse gave me a sneak peak at the results (shh don't tell the doctor) and the radiologist said that there COULD be some stones in the left kidney that aren't causing any obstructions. So, I'll know more about that tomorrow. Sigh. I asked if that could cause needs for more O2 and she said no, definitely not. GAH!! I was hoping that'd be an answer to all of the oxygen problems. But no such luck, the answer to that is, apparently, her lungs just freaking suck.

Ella was supposed to go down to a different area for her ultrasound but when we started getting her ready to go, she started screaming like someone was MURDERING her. Her heart rate was well over 200! Margo (nurse) and I were in absolute shock. NOTHING we could do would calm her down. We tried rocking her, giving her a pacifer, burping her...I even brought her up to breast to see if she would comfort suck or to see if she was hungry. We finally decided there was NO way she should be leaving her room and scheduled the u/s people to come up to her. We got her hooked up onto her regular cannula and I put her against my bare skin and she calmed down. I think it was a combination of being really gassy (Margo gave her a suppository and she pooped like crazy), hating the cannula that was put on her for the go and wanting to cuddle. It was super weird!

That's about it in NICU news. We put up the Christmas tree today when we got home. As many of you know, last summer some stupid jerk broke into our storage and one of the things they took were ALL of our Christmas stuff (why?!?! WHY?? jerks). So all the ornaments and stuff we have we got last year. I personally believe that ornaments need to have a special meaning so other then the balls we have for the tree, we only have a few ornaments and we'll have to build back up ornaments over the years. We have a tradition of giving each other (and our girls now) an ornament for Christmas each year so that'll help. Here's some pictures from today.