Musings

Saturday night I got a record breaking 8.5 hours of sleep. I went to bed around 8pm to do it. It was so nice going to church well rested.

We had someone come and clean our house Saturday. She thouroughly cleaned the bathroom, baby's room and our bedroom dusting everything including all the books on our bookshelf. I wanted this done because both Claire and I have been sneezing. these three rooms took 4 hours and 85 dollars and the kitchen is still a disaster.

The past few days I've spent a little bit of time thinking about the first two months of Claire's life. I am so grateful to my mom for her time with us. She gave us so much support and encouragement during both of her stints with us. It would've been impossible without her. I'm so glad she was with us the day we found out about Claire's brain bleed I am also glad for Luke amd Tiffany's support that day...they happened to take us out to lunch that day right after we had met with the doctor.
Sometimes when I think back to my time spent in the NICU I am sad that I didn't communicate better with the nurses. It was so hard dealing with so many different caregivers and I was depressed...I just didn't have the energy to explain my desires and ask for what I wanted. I felt like everything was out of my control. On a few occasions I was denied the opportunity to do Kangaroo care. This was extremely painful for me. I also felt bound by their schedule. The 4 hour touch time...then three hour feeding schedule made our lives more difficult in some ways. If I could only hold her during and right after a feed and she had to learn to take all her feeds by bottle where was there room to teach her how to breastfeed? I would always hold her skin to skin when she was already well satisfied after a feed so she wasn't inclined to go to the breast, she was inclined to sleep, plus I felt like I would have to ask permission from the nurse if I wanted to try to put her to the breast and this was difficult for me. Also I was under the misaprehension that Claire would learn to breastfeed in a couple of weeks at the most when she got home and had more opportunities. Neither the lactation consultant, Ocupational therapist nor nurses educaterd me about transitioning Claire to the breast. They showed me how to get her latched on and stimulate her jaw to encourage swallowing. I had read in teh kangaroo care book that most babies who receive kangaroo care go home breastfeeding so I guess I was just waiting for this to magically happen.

Can DO: lick. She starts some feeds by licking several times. She likes to try things in her mouth especially the edge of her shirt while we are dressing her, the esge of her bib while we burp her. She is also salivating much more than she ever did and sometimes blows tiny bubbles. She also makes a cute sighing/singing sound after sneezing which I adore.