Sunny Sunday

Melissa and her parents took a tour of the special care nursery today. The special care nursery is for babies who are stable and don't need NICU attention but aren't strong and big enough to go home yet. One of the primary reasons for admittance to the special care nursery is the baby is able to breathe on their own and don't need a respirator. I walked over to the NICU the first week we were in the hospital and looked at the pictures on the wall of the main hallway. It was pretty scary even though I think the pictures and stories were meant to be positive. I don't know if it was there or in another book they showed us that there was a picture of a NICU baby wrapped around a wall of monitors that appeared to be at least six feet tall. You couldn't see the baby at all behind all of the monitors.

We're entering the transition period where Bea might be able to be admitted to the the special care nursery. It's my understanding that most babies born at 32 weeks are in the special care nursery. Premie babies grow more slowly on the outside then the inside, and those babies young enough to be in the NICU may need quite a bit of time to grow to the point they can be discharged to the special nursery or go home. It's my impression that every day a baby is born too young for the special care nursery, two or three days are needed in the NICU. So it's real nice we've made it this far because the NICU days are dropping real quickly. If we're lucky, we won't even get to see the NICU.

This morning Bea had an unusually busy morning for monitoring. Melissa thinks she knows when its time for breakfast, lunch and dinner because she starts shaking it real good right before meal time. She had a big case of hiccups for a long time today. You can hear the echo very clearly on the monitor and Melissa can feel them. Melissa can feel everything much more acutely now that she's low on fluid again. She's getting sore from all of the activity and lack of cushion. I think mothers may feel their babies from lack of fluid as much or more then the babies size. Fluid levels start gradually decreasing around the 28-31 week period if I remember the stats correctly.