The waters are calm once again

PLEASE NOTE: This all happened 2 years ago, I'm simply copying it to my blog since I didn't have a blog back then.

Originally written November 18, 2007

Autumn has been doing great the past few days. She is on vancomycin and completed 3 days of gentamicin for the Staph Aureus infection she had. They're not sure if it was MRSA or not so they treated as if it were MRSA. (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). I guess there are many different Staphylococcus Aurei but MRSA is the one that does not respond to antibiotics like penicillin and ampicillin, that is why they used vancomycin. The only other medication she is on is caffeine for heartrate drops which is typical in preemies.

We had a scare the other night as she had a hemapositive stool (meaning they found blood in her stool by testing it, not blood you could see). So they stopped her feeds immediately and did x-rays on her belly. Everything looks good so they started her back on breastmilk yesterday. She was up to 25mL but since they stopped, they're starting up again at only 5mL. She was also up to 3lb 6oz but as of yesterday lost an ounce and is now 3lb 5oz. Hope she tolerates her feeds well so they can increase them quickly so she can gain weight again. Friday afternoon when I was there I got some great video of her, she was awake and alert and sucking on her pacifier with great vigor. I think she's ready to breastfeed but their guideline is that it's too soon until she's 34 weeks. She's 33 weeks as of yesterday so one more week and we can start learning to breastfeed together. I just started a prescription called Reglan yesterday. A friend of a friend recommended it and lactation also told me about it. It seems to be working already. I was down to pumping an ounce at most from both but now am up to 2-3 ounces per pump session. In the last week I've also increased my pumping during the day to every 2 hours. I can't wait until she's exclusively breastfeeding so we can feel somewhat normal and I can say goodbye to my much loathed breastpump! You pumping moms know what I mean.

I guess the next goal is her weight and feeding and then she can come home? We will see how it goes. They still won't give us any sort of "estimation" as to how long she'll be there. They have a canned statement, "it's all up to her, she's the boss".

Originally written November 18, 2007