LOOK! Our baby girl is wearing clothes AND in a big girl crib! We moved Makinley from an incubated giraffe isolette to a open crib on Wednesday. The nurses joked that we knew for sure Makinley was ready when the isolette was adding cold air to her instead of warm air. Once we had her moved they told me I could put clothes on her too since she was 34 weeks gestation now. I was so excited!! Finally got to dress my little girl. I had plenty of clothes on hand but had to change my options once I realized we had to work around all of the cords and some of my options were still too big. We opted for this pink/white onesie for her first outfit. I have learned very quickly that it is hard to find preemie clothes - hint to others- Gerber Newborn clothes run smaller and work really well for preemie babies.
We have been working everyday with the NICU physical therapist, Elizabeth. She does a really good job and I look forward to seeing her everyday. She works a lot on Makinley's feet, legs, and neck. She is trying to stretch her feet so that maybe we can eliminate a week or two of casting. After she finishes stretching her feet we use some soft white cloths to wrap around her feet to maintain that stretch a little longer. We also try to straighten out her legs more. This is done with stretching as well. When she is finished she swaddles Makinley very tight to help hold the leg stretch while she sleeps after therapy. Sometimes we put a "frog" bean bag on top of her knees to gain a little bigger stretch. The neck therapy is just to help keep a range of motion since babies lay on their head all the time in the NICU when most of them shouldn't even be born yet. Helps eliminate favoring one side or a flat head in the back.
We asked them to do another feeding readiness test and she scored a 16 out of 17 this time. She missed "showing signs of how to handle a gag reflux." This was high enough that I was able to feed her a bottle on Wednesday. She ate 5 cc's again and did really well for me. Cheryl, the speech therapist, came to watch a few times and suggested we use a slow flow nipple to give Makinley less volume and more time to swallow. Some days the doctors say we can bottle her four times a day if she is alert and interested before a feeding but then another doctors say only twice. We have already learned it is important to have someone in the room when doctors/practitioners do their rounds each day. The hard part is you never know what time of day this will occur. It is important to be an advocate for your child and to listen with attentive ears. The doctor/practitioner usually changes every other week depending who is on schedule for that week. So you can imagine how some information or thoughts can easily be lost or forgotten about. For the most part Makinley is being seen by Dr. Stevens and Dr. Munson. We have really become acquainted with Nurse Practitioner Jean who has been interning since right before Makinley was born. We are thankful to see her everyday and are sad to see her internship coming to an end!
We met Dr. Haft for the first time this week. He will be the doctor who works on Makinley's clubbed feet and helps make them functional. He was impressed with how they looked and said we will touch base again when it gets closer to discharge date. Right now her feet are too tiny to begin the casting process.
Her kidney ultrasound showed no change from prior to birth. This means the left kidney is still slightly larger than the "normal" range but nothing we need to be concerned about. We will just have to do another ultrasound in a few months. They tried to take Makinley off of caffeine this week but had to re-start it once she started having a irregular breathing. Once again - this is very common in premature babies and we will try to wean her off of it again later.
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