It’s IU basketball season, as all of you know. I had been searching high and low for some baby candy-striper warm up pants for our new and tiny IU fan. You know what? They don’t exist. This is very upsetting. So I gave up on IU gear. In the mail, however, a friend sent us a lovely new IU onesie to show our Crean and Crimson pride. Woot! So despite the upsetting loss to Minnesota (Minnesota? Yes….I know…) she was sporting her new gear today.
So what’s new with Coraline? A TON!
Coraline has been switched to a flow of 1 liter at 100% (which is what babies who are sent home on oxygen are set on). She is kicking butt on it. She fell below 95% just twice while I was there today and bounced right back up in seconds. She is usually stuck on 100% Woot!
This means that Coraline gets to eat via mouth as well! We tried to get her interested today but she slept during my entire visit. It was almost ridiculous. We tried everything to get her to wake up. She was not having it. She was, however, super awake before I got there, and her nurse Christie got to have some fun time with her while she was checked by the speech therapist to see if she was ready to eat.
Then Pat, her Occupational Therapist, did rolls and crunches with her. Pat had very positive things to say about her progress!
All this craziness pushed her into a sleepy daze for the rest of my visit. So we will try eating again tomorrow. No rush. She’ll still be in the hospital for another few weeks getting herself sorted out.
She will have her 100 day birthday tomorrow, which coincides with her due date. Very strange to think that I have a 3 month old who should just be born…like…today. For her 100 day birthday, her primaries work together to throw her a party (which she is not invited to) where her parents will get cake and presents. It’s all very exciting. She will most likely hit the 7 lb mark tomorrow. She’s less than half an ounce away right now. Not too shabby for a birth weight, huh? Sooo…her adjusted age begins tomorrow.
For those of you who don’t know preemie aging, they have two ages. They have their birth age and their adjusted age. Their adjusted age is just how old they are based on their due date. Tomorrow her adjusted age will be one day, but her actual age is over 3 months. She will have two ages until she’s about 2-3. That’s usually when preemie babies who are not developmentally delayed, catch up with their full-termer friends.
House work:
The bathroom is coming along great. The tile is down on the floor and in the shower. Stephen, Andrew’s brother, was over today helping out with the electric. The toilet is IN. The shower is usable. The contractors are coming over on Friday to finish up their end of stuff.
We are trying to decide on what to do about a shower curtain since we have sort of a wonky arched shower. A normal shower curtain will not do. It will be too short.
Trying to keep a house clean while doing renovations has proved to be very difficult and frustrating. The animals are not helping. We had a rough night last night. That’s all I will say about that.
We got a notice from the city saying that we had to move all the rubbish, from the demo work Andrew did, by March 8. So this weekend a bunch of guys are coming with trucks to assist in the process. I’m glad so many people have been willing to help. It should make everything go pretty quick. It’s so nice. (Thanks, people)
They also wrote up a citation for our jankety garage. Yes, city inspectors, we know our garage is jankety. If we wanted to keep it we would spend the money on it. We have just been hoping that our stupid Cottonwood tree would blow over in a storm and squash it. This hasn’t happened yet., so turns out we have to paint it. That is supposed to be done by March 22. That’s kind of insane since it probably won’t be warm enough to paint before then. Arbitrary dates…I tell ya… So…if anyone out there has a paint sprayer that can get the job done quick, let us know.
So, I am going to start making homemade commercials for Zicam. This is the shortest cold I have ever had. And I have completely no symptoms, not even a leftover runny nose! Needless to say, I have been back at the hospital, hanging out with my shorty.
The nurse practitioners seemed at a loss for awhile about what to do with her desaturations. As you may remember, she was moved from a flow of 4 liters to 3 to 2 then back to 3 and back to 4. All the while, her desaturating stayed about the same. It seemed to be that she held her breath forcefully during times she was struggling, specifically during reflux. But her numbers were getting way too low. So one of her nurses decided that maybe she should try her at a much higher oxygen rate, which could get her weaned on her flow. It’s working so far. She knocked her up to 35% oxygen, and she had a rockin’ day yesterday. Hopefully her flow will come down soon. The goal is to her to a 1 liter flow, no matter how high the oxygen, even if it’s at 100%. That’s what they send babies home on. Her eyes just need to be ready. So they need the go-ahead from the ophthalmologist.
She is 6 lbs 9 oz now! Wild, huh? She is quite the little chunky. And in fact, my arm got a little tired trying to hold her up yesterday. That was actually exciting. I tried to put on one of her trendy baby newborn outfits…which, I swear to god, came with jeggings. And she is too big for them! In fact, she had a serious baby muffintop to the point where I had to take a picture as it was SO ridiculous. But the outfit would have been super cute. She’s definitely wearing the shirt with another pair of pants.
A few days ago I was there for her OT. I got to watch her baby ab crunches to continue to build muscle tone. She LOVES doing OT. It sounds like all the babies on the floor love when Pat comes to see them. They never know if they’ll get a fancy massage or do a workout, but they don’t care. They love her. Pat seemed pretty happy with Coraline’s progress. So I was too.
As for us:
Poor Andrew. He is burning the candle at both ends. Working full time at work work and working on the house to try to save us some money on the contractors for that bathroom. He has done a lot of the work himself including: demo-ing the entire bathroom, plumbing, electric install, doing the poly for the floor, priming, wainscoting. I was asleep when he came to bed last night and when we left to go back to it this morning. Poor guy. 🙁 The bathroom is starting to look pretty cool though. I wish it was easier to take pictures in such a small space.
We are going to a first birthday party for Coraline’s cousin, Anna, today! I’m glad that Coraline has some cool cousins her age and nearby.
I gotta go pick up the dog from the boarders and bring him home. This should be….fun.
So the last couple days have been a bit of a bummer for me. On Saturday I had kind of a nasty throat. If you could see the state that our house is in right now you might understand why I thought THAT might be to blame. I haven’t been sick since MAY. May, you guys! That is the longest stretch ever. So I was feeling a little invincible and thought, “No…I can’t be sick! That doesn’t happen to me anymore.” And my glands weren’t swollen or anything. So I went to the hospital. I felt fine at the hospital…just a little gross in the throat still, but just to be safe I tried not to touch the baby too much. That is hard to do cause she’s so darn cute. So I really tried to avoid her hands/face. I didn’t hold her. I did, however, help to give her a bath and put her in a super cute new newborn outfit.
So I came home to Andrew working on the bathroom with the help of a Mr. Andrew Woody. His new wife, my friend Julia, was just finished painting in the baby’s room. What a great thing to come home to! As time wore on, I started a feel a little wonky. By the time Andy and Julia left, a few hours later, I was laying in a pile of blankets on the couch. I had Andrew get the thermometer and I had a temp of almost 102! WHAT?! Out of nowhere. Andrew was like, “Wow…your face is RED.” I could tell.
Andrew immediately went out to get me some Zicam upon the suggestion of Julia and I have been taking them every three hours since. The fever lasted all of three hours. I am now down to a tickle in my throat, a cough every now and then, and a sniffly nose. So I didn’t go to the hospital on Sunday at all. Andrew went and had a lovely time with baby and Grandma.
I talked to the nurse practitioner this morning and she suggested that I not come in till I’m 100%. I totally can go along with that but it’s REALLY SAD! 100% could take a week! At least! So…that is bumming me out. I am trying to get Andrew to go up every day so long as he stays healthy.
Of course Andrew is busy with other things like…helping to remodel the bathroom! Andrew Smash:
Which means that not only am I banished from the hospital…I am also kind of banished from my house. As we have no shower or toilet to use. So another friend, Brian, is SO nice to let us stay with him. It’s been great. I woke up to a K-Cup coffee and homemade zucchini bread this morning! What a host.
As for Coraline:
She is healthy! Yay!
They weaned her down to 2 liters of oxygen on Sunday, but she dipped down into bad saturation levels quite a bit so they turned her back up to 3. She’s not quite ready. Next time they go down I believe they are going to try 2.5 to see how that goes.
She is getting really big! As of last night she weighed 6 lbs 1 oz. She gained 3 ounces in one night. So they decided to take her to 24 cal feedings. They also had to increase her volume since she’s gaining weight and she’s up to 49 mL each feeding. We’re finally starting to make a dent in the milk stock we have in the freezer at the hospital. The nurse practitioner also said that she is being taken off the human milk fortifier that they add to her milk, and will be using Neosure in it instead, which is another move forward. If only her lungs were growing as much as the rest of her.
She has a vibrating bouncy chair that she has been in twice. We have been told that she is into it.
I think that’s about it.
Thanks to everyone who has helped out this week! Andy, Julia, Brian B., Brian S., Stephen and to our lovely neighbors who are putting up with our mess and noise. They may not like it, but they haven’t called the police or code enforcement on us yet! Win!
Ok. So we are in the home stretch with Coraline… it seems like any day now she’ll be on low enough flow on her Vapotherm (her breathing support) that they can start trying out nursing and then bottle feeding as well. Once that happens we are mere weeks away from her coming home. This girl will likely have some continuing breathing complications. Dust and VOC’s will not really be acceptable in the house for months, or possibly years to come. Our bathroom has been neglected on projects primarily because its our only one, and any major work meant we’d have to stay somewhere else during the project.
But that is where we are now. The finishes and plumbing have deteriorated too far for us to keep it spotless and hygenic for our little one, and it has to get wrapped up before Coraline comes home. It is on like Donkey Kong.
I’ve come to an arrangement we can live with with some Contractors we trust. We came up with the project list, and we’re dividing labor between what I can do with friends, and what I’d like them to handle so I can get it done and still get my day job done, and see my little lady in the Hospital. It is definitely going to hurt the savings, but we need to have it done and over with. They start work on Monday. Almost all of my jobs have to be done before Monday morning.
I’ve posted a running project todo List on the Bathroom page. I have a bit of help lined up this weekend, and its a small room, but I could probably use some more help… Message me or text or whatever, and we’ll try to coordinate.
I’m pretty sure I need to pick up a sheet of special MDF tomorrow, and I either need to get it to Northwest Lumber to break it down to the pieces I need for the wainscotting, or to take it to someone with a good table saw, panel saw, or CNC setup to break it down. And I need to borrow a truck to do the above. The sheet is 49″x96″ I believe, so its a bit unwieldy. I’ll have to do that pick up and drop off sometime during regular business hours (likely in the 3-4PM range at the latest).
We’ve been up here for 12 weeks now. People have been asking a lot if we know when we’re going home. Chances are that she gets weaned down to 2 liters of O2 within the next week. She just got weaned again to 3 liters today and she seems to be doing quite well. Hopefully it sticks. Once she gets to 2 liters, she can learn how to eat. Once she gets there, it will probably be another 3 weeks. Soooo…it looks like we’re looking at a month at this point. Maybe a little less, but around a month. That would put us home a week after when we would have been home had she been full-term. So that’s not SO bad.
Things are going along pretty smoothly now, although it seems that Coraline has a bit of an acid reflux issue. She’s not puking or anything, so it’s not horrible. However, a few minutes ago she did just cough/choke a bit into a brady and a lovely desat into the 40s. Sooo…that’s fun. They put her on Zantac two days ago, and she seems to be much more comfortable. She isn’t holding her breath nearly as much today as she has in the past week or so. Her feedings are now going in at 30 minutes rather than 45. She seems to be not troubled by this and is still digesting most/all her food.
Other updates:
Weight: 5 lbs 6 oz. – She is now wearing newborn clothes. Her preemie stuff is getting a little too snug! We’re hoping they recommend moving her down to 24 cal cause she is getting pretty chunky pretty fast on 27 cal.
Eyes: ROP has not progressed. She had an eye exam and she’s still the same. So that’s good news.
General health: She is not sick. She hasn’t been sick. We are very lucky to have had very little issue with any infections or illness.
Cuteness: She is maintaining her level of cuteness, if not even progressing a bit.
She still enjoys watching her mobile a lot. So that’s cute.
She has a bunch of cute hand-me-downs and clothes which were gifts, so it has been fun to dress her up.
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