So often I have been writing about things that affect Samuel because he's a preemie, I would to take a few moments to share how much he's been changing and hitting some full-term baby milestones during this month. He is sure growing and changing fast! So much so that when Ben has to be gone for Church or guard, he is always amazed at how much he's grown and changed while he was gone!
In May I started to hear some cooing sounds, but then I didn't for a while. Well, in June, he's picked them back up, big time! After a feeing when he's awake he will sit there and just make cooing noises. I'll be in the kitchen washing out my pump and here a bunch of "ooh's" from the other room.
He's also gotten to be quite smiley! Smiling and cooing seem to go hand in hand. We learned that if we tap his lips gently with our finger it encourages more smiles and coos! He has the cutest little smile (at least we think so, but hey, we're his parents!) and even a little dimple on one side! Last night Ben was playing with him and did an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression and that even elicited a laugh from him! Probably the first laugh he's done!
Between the cooing and smiling Sam's beginning to be quite fun to play with. It seemed like we were locked so long in a pattern of changing diapers, feeding and burping and that was pretty much the only activities he participated in and he hated the diaper changes. So it is nice to start seeing him become playful! We have been ready to see this start and glad he is too!
Lately he's also stopped viewing diaper changes as the worst form of torture known to man kind. In fact he sometimes seems to even like them! He tends to really like them we he has a particularly messy diaper, which used to be when he howled the loudest and hardest. Now he sometimes even smiles and coos while we change his diaper. Of course there still are a few changes in a day where he's a little fussier during, but hey, this is a vast improvement!
We've also started allowing Sam to sleep longer at night. Now he wakes up 1-2 times at night. That's fantastic for all of us! He tends to be more awake and playful in the day now and more sleepy at night. We have notice a few fussy times however. He really doesn't like being put down to sleep that first time at night and he really doesn't like to pause eating to burp! Yesterday he was being especially dramatic about the burping, so I was calling him my drama king.
On another note, we did another overnight trip to Milwaukee. His first out of state adventure! He did great! We stayed at my cousin's house. They are expecting a little boy in the fall and already have a 2 year old daughter so that was fun. Their daughter got to learn a little about how to act around a baby (gentle touches). We went to a wedding and Sam did great through it all! On the way home we were going to try to stretch his feedings out a little and make the drive in one shot, but about a half hour from home he decided he was hungry, so we stopped (we would have made it, but we were somewhat slow at leaving the reception). Oh well, we tried and he did great! We are starting to really get this overnight traveling down! Which is good and we have 1 more to go this month (We'll be visiting Ben's Grandma who has not been doing well. We weren't planning on going out that direction until later this year, but we want to make sure she gets to meet Sam.).
Showing posts with label diapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diapers. Show all posts
25 June 2012
11 February 2012
Friday, February 10 - "Bubble" Bath
Happy TWO WEEK BIRTHDAY Sam!!!
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!
07 February 2012
Tuesday, February 7 - Bath Time
Today was a good day for Sam. But before I go into that, let me tell you about the last bit of last night. Ben got to the NICU before Sam's 9:30 check and feeding (they check his vitals and feed him apr. every 3 hours) and one of the things we do at these checks is to change his diaper. Since I had been changing his diaper all day, I asked Ben if he wanted to do this one. He eagerly declined (though he had already changed one diaper and then another today, making it 2 diapers).
Well, this diaper was a perfect diaper for the Daddy to change, because it was quite full. He got quite the poop out (and it is that stuff that full terms generally get out in one or two poops, if you've had kids, you know what I'm talking about). It was by far the biggest diaper all day! We were relieved that he was wearing the bigger size diaper because Samuel might have blown out his diaper otherwise!
This morning the doctor came in to tell me that Samuel's creatinine levels were a little high. The creatinine levels indicate how well the kidney is functioning. His kidneys are functioning pretty well we know by how wet or poopy his diapers are. However his levels were more akin to what they should be for an adult. That said, the medicine he was on can affect those levels. Now that he is off the medicine they did notice a decrease in the creatinine and we are expecting for those levels to continue to go down. If they don't Sam might have to get a renal scan to check the kidney for problems. So we are hoping and praying that the doctor is right that the medicine is what caused it and we will continue to see those levels go down!
All morning he was breathing great! In fact they kept turning the oxygen down until it was almost to the amount that we breathe in regular air. At noon our nurse for the day went and collected things to give Sam a bath, he had had a sponge bath last week, but this bath was with a little plastic tub. Preemies get bathed a little differently than full term babies (not that I would know as I never had a full term baby). What they do is they leave the baby wrapped in a blanket and then unwrap and rewrap as they wipe down different parts of his body.
Samuel did really good through the whole bath! During the bath I held up his arm with the peripheral IV so it wouldn't get wet. When they were done bathing him they wrapped him in a dry blanket to dry him off. We did this all in his incubator with the top up, that way he'd stay even warmer throughout the process.
This afternoon we had family rounds. Most of the goals from last week we either kept and want to do even more so or they were achieved and no longer need attention. Some goals for this week include: decreased creatinine levels, continued kangarooing with feedings, becoming stable enough to not need the CPAP, increased milk intake so he doesn't need the IV, Ben and I to continue helping contain Samuel during the different cares, and maybe a few more along those lines that I am not thinking of. Really Sam is doing great and there were no real negatives to discuss. :-)
Well, this diaper was a perfect diaper for the Daddy to change, because it was quite full. He got quite the poop out (and it is that stuff that full terms generally get out in one or two poops, if you've had kids, you know what I'm talking about). It was by far the biggest diaper all day! We were relieved that he was wearing the bigger size diaper because Samuel might have blown out his diaper otherwise!
This morning the doctor came in to tell me that Samuel's creatinine levels were a little high. The creatinine levels indicate how well the kidney is functioning. His kidneys are functioning pretty well we know by how wet or poopy his diapers are. However his levels were more akin to what they should be for an adult. That said, the medicine he was on can affect those levels. Now that he is off the medicine they did notice a decrease in the creatinine and we are expecting for those levels to continue to go down. If they don't Sam might have to get a renal scan to check the kidney for problems. So we are hoping and praying that the doctor is right that the medicine is what caused it and we will continue to see those levels go down!
All morning he was breathing great! In fact they kept turning the oxygen down until it was almost to the amount that we breathe in regular air. At noon our nurse for the day went and collected things to give Sam a bath, he had had a sponge bath last week, but this bath was with a little plastic tub. Preemies get bathed a little differently than full term babies (not that I would know as I never had a full term baby). What they do is they leave the baby wrapped in a blanket and then unwrap and rewrap as they wipe down different parts of his body.
Samuel did really good through the whole bath! During the bath I held up his arm with the peripheral IV so it wouldn't get wet. When they were done bathing him they wrapped him in a dry blanket to dry him off. We did this all in his incubator with the top up, that way he'd stay even warmer throughout the process.
This afternoon we had family rounds. Most of the goals from last week we either kept and want to do even more so or they were achieved and no longer need attention. Some goals for this week include: decreased creatinine levels, continued kangarooing with feedings, becoming stable enough to not need the CPAP, increased milk intake so he doesn't need the IV, Ben and I to continue helping contain Samuel during the different cares, and maybe a few more along those lines that I am not thinking of. Really Sam is doing great and there were no real negatives to discuss. :-)
06 February 2012
Wednesday, February 1 - No More Bili Lights!
Wednesday was a fairly uneventful day. The big news is that they took his bili light away. The bili lights are used to treat jaundice if you remember from my Saturday post. Every day they took a count of how much jaundice was still in his skin. When the number gets low enough they no longer use the bili lights. Well, the count Wednesday morning was low enough, therefore no more bili lights for Samuel!
That was good because that meant they were now able to snuggle him in better in his little incubator. That snuggling is god for him because it gives him something to push against. In my womb, he had all sorts of boundaries to kick (which he did kick quite regularly), under the bili lights he had almost nothing to kick and punch, which meant he was constantly squirming!
Now that he doesn't have the bili lights anymore and they wrap him in better he has been much more calm and relaxed overall. It's good to see that, I always wanted to do something to help him calm down, but didn't really know what I should do!
The other exciting thing was that he pooped for the first time! So before he just had wet diapers, now he is working on pooping out that gross meconium stuff that comes in a baby's first diaper (but for him it will take him a little longer to get it pushed out). That means the milk is doing well with him and he is doing well at pushing it through his system. So proud of my little man being able to poop!
I got to kangaroo with him again on Wednesday. Those are such special moments for me with my son. It becomes easier and easier to think of him as my son, my little child that I get to care for and love with all the joys and frustrations that go with that!
Now I can't remember if this happened on Wednesday or Tuesday, but since I had less to write about for Wednesday, I'm going to say it happened Wednesday, even though I think it might have happened Tuesday instead. I think I have mentioned that Sam is stubborn. If I hadn't yet, well, he is. He is stubborn and determined to get what he wants when he wants something it seems. Ever since birth, one thing he has wanted was none of these tubes and lines stuck to him anymore. Just let me free!
Well one evening, while under the bili lights, he really managed to free himself from a lot of his "bondage." Ben and I were sitting in the room and I saw him really squirming quite a bit, so I went to check on him. I get over there to find out he had undone the velcro on his bubble CPAP hat that holds the CPAP in place, he had pulled out his eye mask that he needed to protect his eyes from the bili lights AND he had pulled the tube that goes down to his stomach almost completely out! So I wash my hands quick and I get in there and I am doing my best to put things back where they needed to be (but I didn't trust myself shoving a tube back down his throat) so while I am trying to put things back I told Ben that we needed to get a nurse to get things back to place right!
I was very impressed with Sam's ability to get all that stuff off. He is a smart and strong little boy!
And that is the thought I will leave off at with this post. :-)
That was good because that meant they were now able to snuggle him in better in his little incubator. That snuggling is god for him because it gives him something to push against. In my womb, he had all sorts of boundaries to kick (which he did kick quite regularly), under the bili lights he had almost nothing to kick and punch, which meant he was constantly squirming!
Now that he doesn't have the bili lights anymore and they wrap him in better he has been much more calm and relaxed overall. It's good to see that, I always wanted to do something to help him calm down, but didn't really know what I should do!
The other exciting thing was that he pooped for the first time! So before he just had wet diapers, now he is working on pooping out that gross meconium stuff that comes in a baby's first diaper (but for him it will take him a little longer to get it pushed out). That means the milk is doing well with him and he is doing well at pushing it through his system. So proud of my little man being able to poop!
I got to kangaroo with him again on Wednesday. Those are such special moments for me with my son. It becomes easier and easier to think of him as my son, my little child that I get to care for and love with all the joys and frustrations that go with that!
Now I can't remember if this happened on Wednesday or Tuesday, but since I had less to write about for Wednesday, I'm going to say it happened Wednesday, even though I think it might have happened Tuesday instead. I think I have mentioned that Sam is stubborn. If I hadn't yet, well, he is. He is stubborn and determined to get what he wants when he wants something it seems. Ever since birth, one thing he has wanted was none of these tubes and lines stuck to him anymore. Just let me free!
Well one evening, while under the bili lights, he really managed to free himself from a lot of his "bondage." Ben and I were sitting in the room and I saw him really squirming quite a bit, so I went to check on him. I get over there to find out he had undone the velcro on his bubble CPAP hat that holds the CPAP in place, he had pulled out his eye mask that he needed to protect his eyes from the bili lights AND he had pulled the tube that goes down to his stomach almost completely out! So I wash my hands quick and I get in there and I am doing my best to put things back where they needed to be (but I didn't trust myself shoving a tube back down his throat) so while I am trying to put things back I told Ben that we needed to get a nurse to get things back to place right!
I was very impressed with Sam's ability to get all that stuff off. He is a smart and strong little boy!
And that is the thought I will leave off at with this post. :-)
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