Megan at 8 weeks snoozing in Daddy and Mommy's bed.
Megan ~ newborn.
See how much she's grown!
We are a family that has fallen in love ... off the deep end, over the moon, sky high ... in love. I don't think any of us can get enough of our Meggie girl.
As some of you realized, Megan was born at 36 weeks. Everything was going so well we thought we were going to make it to her 39th week, but the high risk doctor became quite concerned over the amount of amniotic fluid which began to disappear rather rapidly. So JR and I were sent straight from the the peri-natologist's office to the hospital for the C-section.
Here's my sweetie when we were waiting to go back for surgery. He looks a bit intense, doesn't he? Facing a C-section is a little scary. Even though we look forward to holding our precious baby we both dread the surgery.
We were very blessed. At 36 weeks Megan was considered a late preemie, but there were no major complications. She does have a herniated umbilical cord/belly button which looks like a little stump around her belly button, but that is shrinking more each week and is almost unnoticeable now.
We were warned that her nervous system might be a bit overly sensitive for a while, and it was. In fact, she slept with us for several weeks because if she wasn't touching us she would shake and shiver. She had a few gasping spells that scared me half-to-death, but she recovered from them just fine. The hospital nurses told us it was just a preemie thing - (the immaturity of her ability to control her digestive and breathing systems) - and to suction her mouth, pull her upright and pat her back. Those were just small things that she gradually out grew.
The biggest issues were her bilirubin count and not gaining weight. We've had two other babies that were jaundiced but never this badly. Because the bilirubin kept climbing, our pediatrician ordered a bili-blanket for her. She was supposed to need it for two or three days. We had it for two weeks. We called her our little glow worm! She had to stay in just her diaper with a glowing, bendable-plastic mat wrapped around her and all of that wrapped in a blanket with the big, heavy, fiber-optic cord coming out of it all.
Meggie on her Bili-blanket
(You can click on picture to enlarge.)
With the flash ~
so you can see the machine.
Without the flash ~
so you can see her glow!
On top of that - either because of the jaundice or her early birth - she just wouldn't eat enough. I could
n.o.t wake her up to eat; I have never seen a baby sleep this heavy. She went from 6 lbs. 1 oz. to 5 lbs. 6 oz. While that is neither a dangerously low weight nor a dangerously large weight loss (we've had one baby lose more the first few days), it was the continual, ongoing loss of weight that was scary. We couldn't seem to get her weight to level off. There were moments I even feared she could just slip away from us. And of course, a sleeping baby that won't eat creates a whole other nightmare for a nursing momma. I began to get quite concerned that she was causing her milk supply to diminish, but my knight in shining armor went out a rented a
Medela pump. That seemed to be the turning point in the milk supply, in her eating and in ridding her body of the bilirubin.
By the end of week two we had finally gotten the bilirubin count under 12, and she didn't have to be hauled to the doctor or hospital every other day for a heel prick (which broke my heart to watch!). At the end of week three we lost the bili-blanket, and by the time she was four weeks old she was nursing like a newborn, still needing a lot of help but eating once she got going. Now at eight weeks, she is a good eater and she's starting to plump up. She sees the doctor on Monday, and I can't wait to see how much she weighs!
