Grow Farrah Grow

It has been a few days since the last update, and in this case, no news is good news. We had a wonderful weekend with Farrah and spent a lot of time holding her. I started a new schedule where I go to see Farrah before and after work, which is tiring but well worth it. Ray was able to come to the hospital early this morning with me and then stayed and held Farrah for hours after I left for work.

Everything has been going so well with little miss Farrah. She has done well on the high flow cannula and looks much more relaxed these days. She has already worn three of her new preemie outfits and looks so darn cute in them. Farrah's primary nurses were all so excited to see how much progress she made over the weekend. None of them could believe that she could get off the vent without the steroids, and they are being very protective of her when the doctors and nurse practioners do their rounds. Farrah's nurses don't want her to be pushed too quickly, so they are speaking up and asking the staff to take any changes for Farrah slowly. Farrah's nurses are encouraging only one change at a time, and they are really pushing upping her feeds before weaning her oxygen support. Farrah could probably go into an open crib now, but her nurses want to give her at least another week in her current bed so that she does not burn extra calories trying to keep her temperature regulated. We are in agreement with everything they are pushing for because we also recognize how far Farrah has come and don't want to see her backslide due to impatience or too much, too fast. Three cheers for the primary nurse team - Sherri, Karen, Lisa, Margaret and the recent addition of Jeanie!!! Having these wonderful women as primary nurses to Farrah makes us feel so much better about not being there all the time, and we know how much each of them cares about Farrah. Sherri came back to work on Monday and had purchased a Burt's Bees baby bath set for Farrah. All of her primaries are so thoughtful and take such great care of Farrah and of us.

Not too many other things have changed other than Farrah's feedings have been changed from continuous feeds (where she is fed all the time) to compressed feeds (where she is fed for shorter periods of time.) This will start to get her ready Farrah has handled the feeding change with flying colors. Her weight gain has been slow and steady and she is now at a solid 3 pounds, 10 ounces. They will not be making any changes to her feedings this week but will probably look to go up on the calories of the fortifier and the amount of breast milk in the next week or so. Farrah is getting closer to the time where they will start teaching her how to bottle feed. She has a strong latch on her pacifier right now, so her nurses are predicting that she will be a good bottle feeder and nurser. Hopefully that will be the case.

I had thought that Farrah started smiling on Friday, but no one else saw it to confirm if I was correct or crazy. Today I went in before work and asked Farrah's nurse, Karen, to be on the lookout for her smiling, and sure enough, Karen confirmed that Farrah is smiling occasionally. Now if I could only capture it with a camera...

In the meantime, here are more recent photos. Please note Farrah's cute outfits with the oh-so-handy cuffs that fold over into mittens so Farrah cannot yank on her feeding tube when no one is looking.