Moving Day

Yesturday was another big day for the Manuel clan. Alyssa was moved to transitional care, with very little notice, other then "we're moving Alyssa to transitional care today, and soon". OK, lol.

This really is a great move, this means she is doing well, and she is that much closer to going home. She still is really small, but on her way...Transitional Care (or NICU 3) is where the babies go once they are stable but still requiring help with feeding and growing before being discharged home. I had some mixed feelings about the move. First off, I was thrilled that they thought she was doing well enough to go, but then on the other hand, I've become rather attached to our little area in the back pod...but most importantly to our primary nurses. TCU has its own core set of nurses most shifts, but if there is only 2 out of 3 on then I may get one of Alyssa's primary nurses. All of the nurses are really great, but after being here for 65 days, we've become rather attached to certain people who have been there for us during the very difficult days and who really know Alyssa well. So again, happy and sad at the same time.


I'm wondering if part of the move had to do with me getting really upset the other night. I walked in a couple nights ago, and became very emotional when I noticed the baby who was in Alyssa's old spot was on the oscillator and nitric oxide. (I'm not sure if I mentioned this in another blog, but we moved Alyssa to Jessica's old spot shortly after she passed away, so that I wouldn't have to see another baby there.) This brought back some very bad memories...this is when Alyssa and Jessica were both their sickest...Alyssa luckily came out of it fine, but this is how I remember Jessica her last week with us. It was really hard to see. I cried, and had to close the curtain so I didn't see the equipment, but unfortunately it is so loud that you really can't tune it out. In TCU, it is much quieter because you don't hear the alarms on the ventilators and IV pumps, the noise is babies crying, which is nicer noise most times.

So we're all moved in, with a nice window view, and Alyssa has been doing well. I bathed her last night, and she loved it! She didn't cry once and had the biggest eyes staring at me, and then we dressed her in the cutest little "hoody sleeper", as most people know I love my "hoody" sweatshirts. I had a couple scares today when I was trying to nurse her. I am going to try really hard to breastfeed, but it all depends on how Alyssa is doing, and how my milk supply holds up. It went down a lot in the past month from stress, lack of sleep and poor eating habits, so I'm trying really hard to get it back up again. So anyways...she was feeding some, and then all of sudden she had a blank look upon her face and she wasn't moving, and I looked up at her heart rate dropping from the nice 145 down to 100 to 70...and here we go. Thank goodness her nurse was with me at the time, and she told me to sit her up to stimulate her, which worked perfectly within a couple seconds. Because she is so small, she doesn't really know what to do with the milk yet, so although she has learned to latch and suck, she doesn't quite know how to swallow, and this is how her little body reacts. This happened one more time with her heart rate dropping, then I decided to call it a night, to stressful for me. We'll see how it goes, my freezer is overflowing with milk right now, anybody have any extra space in their freezers that you would like to store breast milk in? Don't all jump at once.

That's it for now, time to pump...