Big Girl Bed

They moved Ivy out of her isolette and into a crib a few days ago. She also got moved into another area of the NICU; she in the the patio suite, right next to the window. She can finally see outside! She doesn't seem to care yet, but it's nice when I go to visit to see daylight instead of the dull glow of flourescent. In the picture, she is tucked in with her unicorn in her new bed, very cosy.







Ivy can eat from a bottle at every feeding. She isn't always awake enough to do this; eating is hard work when you aren't quite three and a half pounds. Usually she gives out before finishing the last five cc's or so. On Sunday, Mom came with me to see her, and the nurses have relaxed the rule about parents being the only ones to hold her. She is getting big and old enough that my Mom got to hold her and feed her a bottle. She was a good girl for Grandma and gobbled it up.

The nurses predict that she will be home by Christmas. She needs to grow a little bit more, and get better at eating. When she can nurse or drink from a bottle at every feeding, she can come home!



I was talking to a nurse the other night who was there the night Ivy was born. I spoke to one a few days after, who said that she was amazed that Ivy was doing so well. She said it was a rocky start. I knew she couldn't breath on her own, and they had to start her heart. This nurse last night told me about trying to get her to breathe that morning. She said Ivy just refused to do it. She just looked at the nurses and respiratory therapist like, "What do you want from me? I'm sleepy." Her lungs seemed fine and she should have been able to breathe on her own. They finally called arond to find out if I had been given anything that would affect Ivy. It turns out that the ER doctor (the one who better hope we never meet in a dark alley because he's dead meat) gave me Mag (magnesium sulfate) to prevent seizures and didn't bother to tell anyone in Labor and Delivery. I know very well that this drug does very strange and unpleasant things to you because I was on it for a day or two after delivery. My girl had been affected by it, which made it harder for her to breathe. Six hours later it had worn off and she could breathe on her own. It's nice to know things about Ivy's birth and early minutes because I couldn't see them, even if they scare me to death.



I had never really met this nurse before, and she was chatty. She also told me that when they first saw Ivy, she looked at the other nurse and asked, "How old is she supposed to be?" She was so little that she didn't seem 31 weeks. They still call her, "peanut," which seems to be the term for all the babies under two or three pounds at birth in the NICU. It's a little less confusing that her first name, since it sounds like medical equipment. More than once, someone has confused Ivy with an I.V. I didn't think of this when Shawn and I chose the name. Hopefully her experiences with hospitals will be limited and it won't be confusing very often. Of course, if she decides to become a doctor or a nurse, she might have to change her name.