11 February 2012

Friday, February 10 - "Bubble" Bath

Happy TWO WEEK BIRTHDAY Sam!!!

When Ben and I got home Wednesday night we were both so tired that we took our time getting ready in the morning.  I got to the NICU at about 11:20 Thursday morning.  When I got there our nurse for the day asked me what my plans were for the next half an hour and I told her that Ben was going to be coming in shortly and we wanted to eat lunch.  So she said we could probably wait a little bit for Ben to get there before giving Sam a bath if we wanted to be part of that process.  One thing they do every 2 weeks is change out the incubator, so as of Thursday, Samuel is hanging out in a fresh incubator!

So I texted Ben and we slowly gathered up items and prepped Sam for the bath.  Right as I was saying we could probably begin because Ben will show up any minute now he arrived.  This was an exciting bath because this was his first bath with soap.  So it wasn't a true bubble bath, but there were some soap bubbles in it!  Once these preemies hit 2 weeks you don't have to be as worried about the skin.  The nurse said his skin now is more like that of a full-term newborn, which is still fragile!  When he was first born his skin was extremely thin and fragile.  So YAY for stronger and thicker skin!

As we were prepping him for the bath we noticed that Sam had a nice breast milk poopy diaper.  That means he's been able to work out all that nasty meconium stuff!  We keep thanking God for things like poopy diapers.  :-)

I talked to the doctor a little later that day and he said that Sam was still hovering on the border of needing a transfusion, which is a very normal thing for preemies to need.  His blood count and oxygen levels have been just high enough to not need it, but it could still very easily need to happen this weekend or early next week.  We are so thankful at how well Sam has been doing and knowing that transfusions are common place here in the NICU we are thankful for a hospital staff that is very well trained and know just what my baby needs to get strong!

After Samuel had his bath he was very alert and awake.  He was wide eyed, squirming and looking at what was around him.  Such a good sign that he is so active.  I kangarooed with him as we fed him at 3pm and that was absolutely wonderful as usual.

That evening my friend, Rachel, stopped by.  That was good to see her.  I got to explain all the NICU baby stuff to her.  It is always fun when someone new stops by because they have no idea what all the alarms mean.  When people stop by they sometimes are surprised that Ben and I don't respond to the alarms at all.  We might glance at them and comment that he's fine and continue conversation.  This is because there are many alarms that go off in Sam's room.  Some are cause for real alarm and some are just letting you know there was a change and by the time you look it is already resolved.

Sometime's there's an alarm because Sam pulled his temperature probe out (his incubator get's kind of mad when he does that).  Only occasionally does an alarm sound that we actually have to worry about.  That is when he drops heart rate and stops breathing and doesn't get it going very quickly on his own again.  Generally he bring his heart rate immediately back up or he starts breathing right away again and that isn't a big deal.  He's being a big boy and getting himself back on track!

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