Not too much to report today. Joshua is looking as good as ever. I got to hold him for 3 hours today, and he slept the whole time while I slept most of it. So nice! Tomorrow will be day five of no food through his GI system (just TPN, total parenteral nutrition, through his catheter), so his bowel is nice and rested. Tomorrow, if his abdomen looks soft and nontender, the plan is to start tiny "trophic" feeds at 1 mL every 4 hours to see if we can get things moving a little. The quicker we can get him up to speed with the breast milk, the sooner we can get rid of that PICC line in his foot. Tonight he gained another 20 grams, now up to 1260 g, which is still 2 lbs 12 oz.
I was thinking of all the miracles God has shown us through Joshua. Of course the most obvious is keeping him in utero an extra 6 weeks when we thought he'd be born at 24 weeks. Then there was the "almost definite" chromosomal abnormality based on the placenta that looked like it had a chromosome problem and lack of nasal bone on ultrasound (which is seen in only 1% of normal babies). Those ended up being normal.
One more thing I never went into specifics about is the positive ACHE and AFP found on amniocentesis. At that point I couldn't take much more, so I just said "it must be a false positive." The positive ACHE and AFP means there's a 97% chance of a neural tube defect (like spina bifida) or ventral defect (where the abdominal wall doesn't form correctly, so the organs pooch out or even hang all the way out of the abdomen). The false positive rate is only 3% (in other words, only 3% of normal babies have these findings). The reason we didn't take a lot of stock in it was because the abdominal wall and spine looked fine on ultrasound, so I had faith we fell in the 3% false positive rate. Are you catching where I'm going here? Joshua really needs to play the lottery the way he likes to fall in the 1-3% zone!
Here's another example of how Joshua fell into the 1%: I mentioned before about my placenta, how after delivery, the dr noticed I had what's called a velamentous cord insertion. That's where the umbilical cord attaches to the edge of the placenta and travels through the membranes (and hemorrhaged area, in Joshua's case) to get to the baby instead of attaching directly to the middle of the placenta where it can get a clear path to the baby. This occurs in only 1% of pregnancies. What I didn't mention before is how serious this could have been. When the cord attaches to the edge like that, the vessels are more prone to rupture in labor, which can cause the baby to be stillborn. If this is found during pregnancy, a c-section is usually warranted to avoid this risk of stillbirth. The dr also told me if my membranes had ruptured ("broke my water") during my labor, there would have been a high risk of stillbirth. Thankfully, the membranes remained intact until Joshua started to come out, and she broke my water for me at the very last second. At the time, we had no idea Joshua was facing these risks. Yes, God has been cradling Joshua in His strong arms this whole time.
Karrn,
ReplyDeleteIt’s Caroline, from swimming and I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanting to share this with someone and you are the perfect person. It’s about pumping. I started pumping when Anthony was seven days old because I was freaking out about him not pooping every day like the nurses said he should so I was afraid that maybe he wasn’t getting enough milk. I mean, how was I supposed to know how much he was getting? I pumped every 3 hours for the first few months (and sometimes I was even pumping WHILE my husband was giving my son a bottle, which he could never see the point of. But hey – if I have to be up to produce the milk, the least he can do is feed the baby, right? ). So anyway, it became apparent that by continuing to pump, I was overproducing. At 4 months, I had three large postal boxes (the ones that ship at a single price no matter how much they weigh) in the deep freezer. Here is what I want to tell you – don’t stop pumping. Even when Joshua (who is adorable by the way!) can breast feed, I would recommend that you keep pumping. And here’s why: every single mother that I encountered in the nursing mother’s room who had gone back to work had started suffering with low milk production. And here I was giving away meat in my deep freezer to make sure that I had enough room for the milk bags. I don’t know if there is a study out there, but from my personal experience, I have felt ZERO remorse about pumping and not breastfeeding. As a matter of fact, it’s nice that my husband got to wake up on the hours BETWEEN pumping sessions to feed Anthony and I got to sleep. When I went back to work, my production didn’t suffer, as it did with the other mothers, and I can tell you that not only do I have a deep freezer with ONLY frozen milk bags, our inside freezer is also full of milk bags. I officially stopped pumping on his 8 month birthday and we have estimated that I have at LEAST four months’ worth of milk combined in each freezer. There is a total of nine postal boxes in the deep freezer with bags stuffed in the spaces in between! But I wanted to tell you because since your milk is so important for your little guy and since you’ve already started with the super-production, don’t stop! You can stock pile that liquid gold for when he can start taking full bottles!
I just wanted to share with you that pumping can be wonderful when you know that you are providing your son with the best nutrition possible! Oh, and even though the bags only go up to 6 oz, you can put up to 8 in there and still have it freeze relatively flat! Love the blog!!!