Fancy a morning Latte?

Getting Sophie all set up in Neonatal was quite a performance, first they attached a probe to her foot that would monitor the amount of oxygen in her blood, so called oxygen saturation. Then there were the little heart monitor electrode pads to go on to her chest which give her respiratory rate as well as her heart rate. Next was the IV line, perhaps the most harrowing to watch go in, most of us will have had one of these put in at some time and 90% of those people will have experienced a botched attempt, just imagine how much harder it is to get one in on a baby of that size. They did eventually get one in, this was needed to give her IV glucose for evergy while she wasn't getting any milk to top up her electrolytes and administer any drugs.

In her incubator with all tubes attached.

As mentioned earlier Sophies biggest problem was to be her breathing, her lungs were formed enough to breath but this was not the end of the matter. It is common in premmies this age to have what they call "Brady's" which is an episode if bradycardia where her heart rate would slow down from about 130 beats per minute to around 80. Associated with this is Apnoea's where her respiratory rate would slow right down, the problem here being that she is just so small and her muscles so weak that she just gets tired and forgets to breathe!
As you can imagine when this first happened we fair panicked. All manner of alarms and flashing lights go off and you can see her heart rate and respirations fall and after a small lag period her oxygen saturation as well. The only positive being that all that is needed to get her out of it was a bit of stimulation, a pat on the back, pick her up and put her down, just taking her blanket off was usually enough. We can be thankfull for that as some babys her age need CPAP (continuous positive airways pressure) where air is blown into there lungs or even in some situations intubation and ventilation!
Day one she did not do too many of these, but on day two the frequency increased slightly. Not too uncommon we were told but could also be an early sign of infection, this turned out to be the case but only a little skin infection in her goin area and a zit on her neck! Easily cleared up with a little topical anibacterial cream.
The frequency of these Brady's and Apnoea's has slowly decreased to where today she has only had a few, which as you can imagine we are pretty stoked about.
There is a stimulant they can use to reduce the amount of apnoeas and brady's that neonates have...... None other than good ol Caffiene! The first time I came in and they told me they had given her some I looked at the nurse indredulously, then looked at Sophie WIDE awake, eyes open and moving around (she doesn't do much of that yet) and thought well, it works for us why not them? The real funny bit is when they had her IV line temporarily removed they added some caffiene to her milk! Latte anyone? LOL

I will cover feeding, breast milk and how she gets her nutrition later.

I am going to fast forward a bit here to the later events of the day she was born (thurs the 15th) and come back to Sophies ongoing health issues a bit later.

That night just happened to be the SANDS group (Stillbirth And Neonatal Death Support) candle lighting ceremony, which is a small ceremony where you can go along and light a candle to remember your lost little ones. We had planned to go to remember Sarah and Deb wasn't going to let a small thing like major abdominal surgery stop her! So we bundled her into a wheel chair and wheeled her down to the chappel where the ceremony was conveniently being held and lit our candles for Sarah. What a trooper. If our tear ducts hadn't been pushed to the extreme allready that day then they were after that. The ceremony was lovely and I think it did us good to have some emotional release, we have been feeling fragile about Sarah for a while now as her anniversary is coming up and the investigation into her death is still ongoing.

Sarahs candle

Deb in her wheel chair.

Can you imagine more of a rollercoaster of a day than that? Extremes of emotion, first anxiousness and worry, then elation and joy, right back to grief and sorrow. We felt like ping pong balls on the table tennis game of life, and it was one of those crazy chinese olympians playing for gold!