Kaitlyn's first days

The morning after she was born, I started to struggle with feeding her. She seemed to latch on just fine, but wasn’t swallowing. She would just lay there. And her breathing was so labored, it was tough to tell if she was sucking or just breathing. She was still recovering from the fluid she had swallowed. This continued all day long. We would just keep trying to feed her periodically, with limited success.

However, we learned that the nurses were in no way worried about her getting enough nutrition because she pooped and peed like a champ! In her first day of life, they hope for at least 1 poop and 1 pee and I think Eric changed at least 3 poop diapers, 1 pee diaper and the nurses changed some too. So they knew that she was eating.

That evening when the shift changed, we had the baby nurse that we had the first night. She was not too happy to hear that Kaitlyn was still so wheezy. She called our pediatrician after 11 pm, which began a long and emotional night. At 1 am or so, we were woken by a doctor from the NICU who let us know they were moving her there. Not a fun way to be woken up! They were concerned about her breathing and definitely wanted to keep a closer eye on her. They had performed a chest x-ray and some more diagnostic tests and hadn’t seen anything unexpected. They brought her by briefly before she went to the NICU – so we could hold her. Well, I got to hold her for a minute and then they wisked her away (poor Eric).

By 3 am, they were moving us to a room that had opened up on the main maternity floor to be closer to the NICU. They took us to see her there and I was pleased to see it wasn’t as scary looking as I thought. She had a feeding tube in her nose and IV access in her hand, but other than that she looked the same. They had just fed her and asked me to hold her so she could be upright (again, poor Eric).

After that, we returned to our room so I could learn the ins and outs of pumping for the NICU. My first attempt went well. And has only gotten better.

The next day (Sunday) is kinda a blur and was definitely an emotional rollercoaster. We saw multiple doctors who were looking at Kaitlyn and learned she had an episode around 5am (the worlds blue were used). This resulted in more tubes being attached to her so my visits to the NICU were definitely tougher. Dad and all the grandparents went to see her often and kept me up to speed. They brought in an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor to check her out to be sure her airway and esophagus were OK. I’m pleased to report that he just came again and said that she is doing well – he scoped her and said everything looks normal except for some swelling in her larynx. This should go down and is likely the cause of these problems. The swelling is an unfortunate side effect of them having to suck mucous out to clear her airway. He is recommending they try and feed her by mouth and see how it goes!!! So right now we are hopeful that we should be able to bring her home soon. I’m preparing myself that I will be discharged today and we’ll have to leave without her but knowing that it will not be long until we have her with us!

I promise to post some pictures later on, but wanted to bring everyone up to speed.