Update, new NICU

Daniel was transferred to a level 2 NICU, which suits me just fine since he will be closer to my home here in Vancouver.  It takes me about 20 minutes to go visit him, and then another 20 min to climb up the four flights of stairs from the parking spot to the NICU.  My hemoglobin is certainly making itself felt, it is low, and I hardly can exert any effort.  On top of everything, my blood pressure is continuing to spike to scary numbers, and I am taking blood pressure meds, sometimes in double doses, to keep it in check.  Being exhausted in the evenings does not help, since my schedule includes going to the NICU from about 12 noon to 6 pm, during which time I get to sit in a chair, and do not get a chance to nap at all.  I am pumping every 2-3 hours, just to try and build up a supply, but it is very slow going compared to all the other women around me.  I am barely able to make up a feed sometimes (his feeds are 40 ml), most of the time I am pumping about 20-30 ml.

On the positive side, he latches very well for his first tries (and he is not even 34 weeks yet!), and was able to transfer 12 g last night, which was amazing.  Most of the time, they expect babies to transfer somewhere around 2 g, so this was an amazing feat for him.  Which makes me feel even worse that my flow is so slow and that I am just not making enough milk to feed him, as he could be exclusively breastfed easily from what I am assessing.  The NICU nurses don't want to let me  use the SNS (the supplementary nutritional system) that I have used with Emma, for fear that he might choke on too high a volume, but I doubt that will be an issue.  In any case, by the time he comes home, I can do whatever I want (insert evil grin, here comes SNS to the rescue!) (can you tell Emma is watching too much Diego?), so my hope is that he won't become too enamoured of the bottle while in the NICU.

Otherwise my bruises are healing, my incision does not hurt too much, and I am moving around reasonably well.  I have lost a total of 35 lb since delivery, most of which in the first 3 days.  I am continuing to lose, but only 2-3 lb a day, as opposed to peeing 350 ml every hour which I was doing in the first 2 days after delivery.  I am going to call it the "preeclampsia diet", extreme weight loss through magic methods.

I am extremely busy, between pumping so often, spending time with Emma, and the 6 hours a day in the NICU, which is why I am not updating daily anymore.  I will try to keep on top of the blog, as it is important, but overall if I don't post please don't worry.  Everything is fine, better than fine.

On this note, the public health nurse called to ask some post partum screening questions, and one of them was about post partum depression.  I feel like I have post partum happiness, heck, I made it out alive and so did Daniel, and all is good, how can I not be ecstatic about our situation?  I had such amazing care, from both internal medicine and the obstetricians, and Daniel was so well looked after by the paediatrics team!  I really felt surrounded by love and attention, and felt reasonably safe throughout the whole experience.  To put it in very visceral terms, the morning of my discharge from the hospital I woke up and looked at my very bruised arms, and thought oh, what if the bruising leaves permanent hemosiderin stains in the skin?  and then my next though was well, it will be a sweet reminder that somebody cared enough about me to start these IV's, and this arterial line.  How many women die alone of this disease, with nobody to look after them?  I was very blessed indeed, and so was my little man Daniel.