This check-in is for October 2018 Babies who are now pooping in diapers and their sleep deprived Moms.
1) How old is baby; any milestones or brags this week?
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your baby one gift. What is it?
Re: Bouncing Baby Check-in (Week of Sept 21)
1) How old is baby; any milestones or brags this week?
Two months old as an out baby, 38w2d gestational. Max is starting to hold his head up on his own. He is also waking up for almost all of his feedings.
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
Going slightly out of my mind. I truly thought we would be going home last week, but I feel like he has just stalled on his bottles. I know he is continuing to improve, but it doesn’t show in his volumes.
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
I’m really sick and tired of the round robin of nursing staff. If I have one more person explain to me about the difficulties in scheduling, I may scream.
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your baby one gift. What is it?
Empathy. I hope my kid grows up to be compassionate and caring rather than a self centered jerk.
1) How old is baby; any milestones or brags this week?
She's 2 weeks out tomorrow, will be 35w gestation. Oh my gosh she's doing amazing! We're pretty much all bottle feeds now for the last several days, and they've changed her to 'at will' feedings because she happy waking up early and wanting more. So now she's driving the bus!
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
Trying really hard not to get my hopes up about her leaving soon, because stalking is normal and could happen any second. Also tired. Sometimes the only time we can go see her is after DS is in bed, getting home at like 4am, and DS takes up between 6-7. I should hopefully be cleared to drive Monday, so that at least should get easier.
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
Several nurses have brought up her possibly going home around 36w, but nothing official yet. Also it depends on her continuing at this pace and no events. Last one was 3 days ago. So if we stay clear...
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your baby one gift. What is it?
Self-confidence. Not one based solely in work either, by confidence in her own decisions. I would love her to believe in herself and her choices without needing outside validation.
1) How old is baby; any milestones or brags this week?
One week, 36+5
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
I’m actually doing great. Bleeding has almost stopped, I’m not having after-pains anymore, and last night I got a 3 hour and a 4 hour chunk of sleep!
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
The UV lights for jaundice make babies poop more often, which has led to a ticket diaper rash. It makes me sad because her bum is super raw and she gets so upset when we change her
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your baby one gift. What is it?
Self-confidence, being able to make good decisions without bowing to peer pressure.
1) How old is baby; any milestones or brags this week?
two months on the 26! Officially 7 weeks and 5 days out also officially 35 weeks gestation (and 1 day). My little guy is 2 and a half pounds. He's doing SOOOO well considering his severe IUGR condition.Still no brain bleeds, no major infections, no issues with digestion. We just need to gain weight and progress off CPAP so we can start bottle feeding and nursing but my dude is drinking 22ml (almost an oz) with how tiny he is. And now I can carry him every day which is incredible.
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
A little more sad these days. I KNEW 26 WOMEN WHO WERE PREGNANT AT THE SAME TIME AS ME (and that doesn't include bumpies...like 26 people in my life) and they're all nice and round now and bragging about how big their babies are and how beautiful the pregnancy is and I can't help but feel bitter. I mean I snap out of it relatively quickly, I know how lucky I am to have survived this and for him to be doing so well but I still feel a twinge of jealousy at how these women all got healthy easy pregnancies and I couldn't provide a safe, healthy environment for my growing boy.
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
No questions but I'm starting to get anxious about bringing him home. Anxious in the sense that I want him home so I can feel like a regular Mom but it almost feels like they're much less aggressive about weaning him off this breathing machine than they were before. I won't get into details but he's on pretty low setting supposedly on his CPAP but he needs to be off it to start normal baby stuff and it's frustrating.
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your baby one gift. What is it?
This is hard. I'm gonna go with @knottieamusements because now that I have a son I feel it's really important for him to be empathetic. Culturally it wasn't something that was pushed on men, whereas women were heavily conditioned to be submissive. With my daughter I wanted her to be brave and stand up for herself and others and never be afraid to speak her mind. With Liam I want to know he'll be kind to others, won't sexually assault a woman, won't think he's better than someone because of the privileges life has given him.
ALSO: It's so amazing to hear how great these babies are doing. You mommas are awesome
Married: 12/16/12
TTC #1: 06/15 BFP #1:07/13/15
D&C: 08/28/15
BFP #2: 09/26/15
M: 06/03/16
BFP #2: 02/12/18
L : 7/26/18 (SIUGR, micropreemie)
I am with you on all of the above. I try to not talk about my feelings of loss and jealousy over not having gotten to experience 3rd trimester in this group because I don’t want to put a damper on everyone else’s experience, but that is part of the reason I stopped being so active on this forum.
As of the breathing/feeding thing- I also know what you mean. I will say this- the feeding part has been far more difficult than the breathing part was. There is a lot to that, but I think one of the biggest things is that it becomes grossly apparent very quickly that every nurse does things differently, and unlike the other things, consistency while he is learning to feed is really important. Also, you get to a point where you don’t actually need the nurses anymore, because you can do everything he actually needs done, but you still have to deal with them and with hospital stuff.
Theodore and Sawyer will be a week old on Friday! They have great latches and when they love snuggles!
2) How are you feeling, Mom?
Amazing honestly. I'm healing quicker than I expected to, still cant poop though! Getting up is sti rough but I think I can switch off the pain killers to just the ibuprofen (:
3) Rants / Raves / Questions?
How do I get these little Rascals on a similar schedule? Sawyer likes to sleep all day and is stubborn about waking to eat. Theodore is the opposite.
4) GTKY: In the spirit of Sleeping Beauty, a fairy godmother comes along to grant your babies one gift. What is it?
Acceptance. To accept others, themselves, that there are things they may not like or cannot change but that's ok. Be accepting of love and life and and kindness and especially each other. They're their first friends and I hope they become best friends and each others biggest supporters.
Oh my gosh I'm so excited! I can't even process it's real.
We had the babies first appointments today and they are almost back to their birth weight!! They look great, Sawyer screamed the whole time because she was hungry even though we ate before we left lol