Sunday February 26, 2012

This morning when we came down to the NICU we were so surprised to find Tatum's CPAP was gone! Hooray!!! She has now been upgraded to a nasal cannula for her oxygen. We are thrilled! Now we can really see her beautiful face and they are allowing us to hold her more. Rich was able to finally hold her today for the first time since she was born. It was really sweet to see the two of them together at last. Tatum is pretty jaundiced today so they ran a bilirubin screening on her and although it is high, it's not high enough to warrant needing to go under the lights. She does look like a pumpkin though. ;) The other big thing that happened today was that I got to give her the first bottle feeding she ever had! They moved her feeding tube to go through her nose now since the CPAP is gone and now we can start feeding her food. She took the bottle really well and ate 10ml on her own. We are so excited because these are two very big accomplishments that need to happen for her to come home. I'm still pumping every couple of hours and still getting next to nothing. I feel stupid when I bring down my bottle with two little drops of milk on it for her but the nurses still assure me this is great and that it's a treat for her. They pretty much just put the milk on her pacifier and give it to her that way. I think it's sweet and I will keep pumping for her as long as I can. I do hope my milk will come in soon. I feel like such a failure. The nurses all tell me it's normal for it to take this long but it is very frustrating. I didn't want her to be on formula at all. This definitely wasn't part of my plan. Funny how nothing about what has happened has been part of my plan. Tatum is already teaching me many lessons in her short time on the Earth. Sometimes even your best laid plans go astray and there's nothing you can do about it. You must adapt to the new plan and go with the flow. I have a feeling that's the lesson in this for me. I have always been a planner and don't do very well when my plans don't work out. Well, I have had no choice but to go with the flow on this. I have a feeling this is how my life will be from now on. Just go with the flow…