This first picture was taken inside the isolette when she was 8 days old (34 weeks). I can't believe she was already smiling!! This picture is a little blurry, but it just melts my heart. She can't wear clothes yet because she still has the umbilical IV, which is really delicate, so they keep her in a closed bed and regulate the temperature inside.
There are 2 little doors on the bed I can open to reach in and touch her. She is such a sweet, bright eyed little girl. Here she is with her feeding tube in her mouth.
This is one of the first times she was old enough to try to eat with a bottle. At first, it was just once a day so she didn't get too tired out. They feed her most of the time with the feeding tube because they want all her energy to go into growing. I guess the doctors have figured out that if she takes more than 20 minutes to eat, she is actually burning more calories than she is getting, so anything she doesn't take with the bottle in that amount of time, they feed her through the tube that goes all the way into her stomach. At first she really wasn't too sure about the bottle, but she picked it up quicker than some babies who were earlier and hadn't started to develop their sucking reflex (32 weeks, weren't we lucky!)
Brooklyn is 12 days old here and they have taken out the umbilical IV and put in a pic line (an IV threaded all the way to her heart-scary!) so now we can finally wrap her up and hold her.
She is a pro with the pacifier, this will be my first time using one. You can't see it in these pictures, but the doctors are concerned that her belly is tight and distended and she might not be digesting everything correctly. So, and this was very hard for me, they stopped feeding her completely for 3 days and put a suction tube into her stomach for 2 days to keep her completely emptied out and give her intestines a chance to catch up. She also had several x-rays. Apparently there are some pretty serious intestinal infections that preemies are susceptible to, so this was necessary. It was really hard to see her on the suction, though, and to hear her cry because she was hungry and we couldn't feed her. Thankfully they were giving her IV nutrition, but still a sight to break a mother's heart.
I think she is just the most precious thing ever. Can't wait to be able to bring her home. It is weird to think that the girls have a baby sister and Sierra hasn't even met her yet (Haddie was allowed 1 brief visit to the NICU, but Sierra was too young).
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