Nearing One Month!

It's hard to believe, but we are edging ever closer to "celebrating" a full month in the Foothills NICU.  Sadie was born on August 24th, making today her 28th day.  Reaching the one month point on Wednesday will be an important milestone, as a high percentage of the complications that can negatively impact preemies, occur during the first 30 days.  Including Christy's three week stay, we are edging ever closer to our third month at the Foothills!

Fortunately, Sadie has managed to dodge several rounds of baby transfers to the Peter Lougheed Centre and to the Rocky View Hospital!  Listening to the news, we know there are bed shortages and funding issues in health care, but it has been very interesting to see the impact first hand. The Foothills NICU has a mandate to keep a minimum number of level 3 beds open (Highest level of care), and so they have to constantly shuffle babies around to other hospitals to make room.  When they know they have new arrivals coming, they quickly jump into action and search for babies that are stable enough to move to another hospital.  "If your baby is stable enough to move", they tell us, "you should be happy with her progress!"  This is absolutely true, however, for the most part we have a hand picked team of nurses looking after our little princess, good relationships with her doctors and we have good routines established.  Moving to another hospital, although likely inevitable, will force us to re-establish these routines and start the process of building new relationships.  Our preference, should we have to move, is to go to the Rocky View, which will be significantly easier to get to from our new house, rather than traversing the city to get to the PLC.  Unfortunately, the decision is based on where there is a bed, although they do make every effort to avoid major inconvenience to the families.  I wonder if the Rocky View has a Good Earth Cafe?

Anyway, Sadie continues to be on auto-pilot.  Her weight bounces up and down daily, but is trending up and she is edging ever closer to the 1 kg mark.  As of last night, she weighed roughly 950 grams.  She continues to receive oxygen through nasal prongs, which is clearly still necessary, as her sats drop almost instantly when she manages to pull them out of her nose.  At her present weight, there is not a huge amount of room in her gut for both a full stomach and fully inflated lungs.  Something has to give and so her sats typically drop and her work of breathing increases when her tummy is full of milk.  As she grows and creates more real-estate, her dependency on oxygen should abate, but it is not uncommon for babies to be sent home on oxygen.  We likely have another full month to go before we bring Sadie home and our family feels complete once again, and so hopefully this month will speed by as quickly as the first.  Have a good week everyone.   G  

Baby Trivia:

Smallest surviving Baby on record: 244 g (September 2004)   Sadie = 720 g (August 2009)

Notable Preemies: Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein...