Day 4, A dose of reality

Today was rough. Everything to this point has been generally trending upwards, but today was discouraging. Ava was put under the lights for jaundice (but thankfully, Ella no longer needed the lights), so we were not able to Kangaroo w/ her today. Ava was generally steady but was really up and down w/ her feedings. I think Rachel may blog about that later. Ella is our little stinker. She already knows how to get to her mom and dad. She had a lot of bradycardia today (brady's for short). In layman's terms, this is when the heart rate get's dangerously low, and the baby needs to remind itself to keep breathing. They call this a self-stimulation or self stim. Basically an alarm goes off, and a nurse watches the baby to see if they bring their own heart rate back up. If needed they'll jump in and help stimulate the baby by moving and gently poking the child. They'd rather the child self stim because you don't want them to "learn" that someone else is always going to handle them.

There were a lot of these episodes today, each one lasting only a few seconds, but they are so hard to watch! Each one really takes its toll.

Here is Ava holding daddy's hand for the first time.


-tinny out