Milestones.

Milestones for the Day:

a) Now on 3 hourly feeds of 42ml. People have asked why she needs to be 3 hourly when some full term newborns will only feed 2 hourly. The answer is that it is not necessarily paramount but makes things easier for Deb, because she is expressing 3 hourly, it helps to prepare her for a good pattern of feeding for when she moves on to the breast and helps to prepare her stomach for receiving slightly larger volumes of fluid.

b) Up to 1850g as of Friday, this is a good weight gain and right on target.

c) Managed to get around 10ml of milk by herself direct from the breast. This is more than can be expected of her at this stage. Usually premmies suck and swallow reflex is not developed enough to effectively get any milk direct from the breast until they are the equivalent of 34 to 36 weeks gestation. Sophie is 33+4 days today, incidentally the same gestational age that Sarah was when she was born. Another point made (by my avid readers) is that she has demonstrated visibly in some of the videos her ability to suck, true she can suck and suck well but it is the coordination between sucking swallowing and breathing simultaneously that she can't quite get right yet. We are assured that this will come, and by the look of things sooner rather than later.

Getting dressed in one of the outfits Aunty Rachel sent over.

It is starting to get a little tiresome now, Deb and Sophie living at the Hospital while I live at home without them, not exactly what we had in mind for our first few weeks after Sophie was born. I think the car knows it's own way to the hospital and back, it has made the trip so many times, the odometer has clocked up 150km since this started, and counting. It is an inconvenience, and a big one at that but nothing more and every time I have to say goodbye to my girls I tell myself 'it's not forever', it is the only way i can cope with it.

I wonder if the Romans imagined that 2000 years later we would be using their road distance markers as a metaphor for reaching important life stages? I think not.

The Good, the Bad, and the Grizzley.

We are starting to feel like a family. As I sit here and write this Deb and I are sitting next to one another on the SAME bed, and our little girl is in her cot at the foot of the bed in the SAME room. Right now she is cooing and making cute little baby sounds, she hardly has any cords attached, bar one for her food. In fact if we weren’t in a hospital with the hustle and bustle of a Neonatal unit right outside the door the last few minutes could have passed for normality very well. She just opened her eyes and looked at me. Hi Darling :)

I had one of those epiphany moments last night where I stopped, looked at what I was doing and thought “what the hell”. I was doing something that would not be unusual for me with one huge exception. I had just spent about 20 minutes unwrapping, reading instructions, plugging in and figuring out how to use a new gadget. Now don’t get me wrong, this is something I quite enjoy doing, and having actually read the instructions before starting this time I had done quite well and was feeling rather proud of myself. The epiphany came when I looked at the assembled device in my hand: A BREAST PUMP. OMG.

If you weren’t able to gather it from the last post, Sophie is now in a cot and holding her temperature well and Deb has moved into the Neonatal unit. Momentous events (suck suck suck on the dummy in the background). She got weighed again this morning (they all get weighed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and had put on 65g since Monday, making her 80g up on her birth weight. Baby steps for a baby girl.

With the good things that come with getting a little closer to normality come the bad. Believe it or not it has been some 2 hours since I started writing this, multiple interruptions you see. I don’t mind being interrupted, especially when it is to do something like bath the baby (which we did do, amongst a myriad other things) but now she is unsettled and grizzly and we can’t figure out why. This is very frustrating, you know there must be something wrong and you want to put it right for them, the fact is that if you knew what is was it would probably be quite easily remedied, but you don’t know what it is so you can’t fix it. Then they cry some more, your stress levels go up, they can read this in you and it only feeds their upset and so leads to more crying, a vicious circle of the worst sort. I know this is nothing new to all you parents out there, but it probably amuses you to hear someone else going through it.

Classic Facials

Well, she is getting a bit more settled now so probably time to settle ourselves too. Until next time, Sayonara, Ma Salaama and Au Revoir.

And in late breaking News...

Thanks Jim, I've been down here at Taranaki Base Hospital Neonatal Unit where events have been unfolding around me. We are getting reports here that that the young socialite Sophie Greenwood has been creating quite a stir here at the unit, mixing it up with the big girls.


Yes thats right Jim, none other than Sophie Greenwood herself has made the astounding move or leaving her incubator, the so called "plasticave" for the greener pastures of a cot. Reactions have been mixed, whilst young Sophie did not have much to say on the matter herself opinions of the main two witnesses to the event, parents Chris and Debra were ecstatic.


When questioned on the matter her mother Debra had this to say "Shes been building up to it for her whole life, it has always been a goal for her and she has been single minded in her determination to achieve it" and her Father Chris siad "I've always known she was going to make it this far, she was never fully comfortable with the plasticave, we are very proud of her"


In this TV blog exclusive Jim we have been able to obtain this rare footage of the event:

Notice how Miss Greenwood shows some dislike for her new surroundings vocalising her distress just as Dad notes how happy she is looking.

The smile says it all Jim.

And in realted News we have it from reliable sources that Debra Greenwood has been moved into a room in the Neonatal unit itself. It is understood that she has been Lobbying for this move for quite some time and it feeling quite vindicated that unit government has seen fit to acquiesce to her demands. This change in arrangements is going to mean some considerable gains in efficiency can be made, reducing the so called "milk miles" that Sophies milk has to travel to the milk storage and distribution facility. "enough can't be said for the convenience factor" Mrs Greenwood said and "to be right next to Sophie and to be able to wheel her down to my room is just magic". Husband and Father Chris is also said to have been over the moon at the move, and unconfirmed reports suggest that he too will soon be able to stay in this room.


Coming to you live from TBH NNU, this is Reporty Dude Makamanameup for TV blog signing off.

Can you imagine a better birthday present?

I got the greatest smile today, what a great present for my birthday. Sophie was awake and very happy, I held her close and was talking to her for a while, she looked very contented. It might be all in my head but she seems to really like it when I talk to her, I was mid sentence and had to stop because my heart skipped a beat when the most wonderfull smile came over her. Now I don't know about babys and smiling and when they genuinely can do it and/or mean it but to me it was real and awesome. It made my day.

In other breaking news Sophie weighed in at 1695g today, that means she is 15g up on her birth weight after dropping from 1680g when born down to 1560g a few days later. Don't underestimate the importance of this, at the moment her weight is key and the main indicator of how well she is doing. It also means she is getting enough nutririon from her fortified milk alone and as long they can gradually increase the amount she is taking, which they did today, then she will continue to do well. Baby steps for a baby girl.

We had a fairly hectic on today, we had the family over for a roast for luch to celerate my birthday and to have a toast and wet Sophies head. It all went very well and everyone had a good time. It was not quite the tree slashing beer drinking BBQing free for all I had originally planned but at least we all got together to mark the day.

Other short term goals for Sophie at the moment:

• Maintaining her core body temperature out of the incubator. They have been gradually reducing the temperature in her incubator and will continue to do so until it reaches room temp, about 24^C in the NNU. She is currently at 26^C having started at up around 35. The nurse tonight said she may well achieve this and therefore be out of the incubator by tomorrow. Wicked.

• Getting off the monitor. She still has the pulse oximeter attached, thats the one on her foot to measure her O2 saturation. We can remove it whenever we want at the moment but she still needs it when she is in the incubator. I don't know what the criteria is for having this removed but I suspect it will come off when she comes out of the incubator, so maybe tomorrow for that one too.

• Keeping up her feeds, pushing them back to 3 hourly instead of 2 hourly and putting on weight. As described above this is all important and a gradual process.

Sorry no pics today, didn't take anything new. She is getting a new outfit on tomorrow though so there is bound to be photos of that :)

It was a morning like any other....

I woke up this morning to find that I was full even though I didn't remember drinking anything, strange that.

Anyway, I was trying to open my eyes which I am starting to get pretty good at now (my eyelids are VERY heavy you know) when I see this face staring back at me, somehow I know I like this person, she had been around since the begining and allways seems to be there for me. Next thing I know I am being rudely turned over and all wrapped up, my arms pinioned down so that I can't poke my face with my ungainly fingers, which I have developed a fondness for recently. Then I had this nice tasting thing shoved in my mouth, I got this irresistible urge to suck it, so I did but got pretty tired quite quickly, it was hard work and even though I was getting some pretty good tasting stuff out of it I thought "why bother" my tummy fills itself every 2 hours like clockwork anyway.

So I lay there a while feeling quite secure and got moved around a bit, next thing there is another face staring at me, this one I recognise too, he isn't around quite as much and doesn't have those nice tasting things attached to him but I think I like him too. Then I decided that that was quite enough and dozed off for another quick nap.

I was starting to try for the eyelid thing again when it happened. There had been quite a bit of mouth moving and bli bli bla bla bla noises coming from the adults so I thought somthing might be up. The nice secure feeling blankets were suddenly whipped off me and next thing I knew I was butt naked and the nice lady who keeps calling herself 'mummy' was draping this pink and white thing all over me!

It was just awful, it wrapped all over me but i could still move my arms and legs and I am not used to that. Don't you worry, I let them know about it but they didn't seem to get the message no matter how loud I screamed and wailed.

After a little bit I realised it wasn't that bad and settled into it, and as it turned out it kept me quite warm, good thing for them I decided I liked it.

When I got back to my home, I like to call it the 'plasticave' it had magically cooled down a bit and so wouldn't over heat me, everything just seems to be falling into place, man I am good. If I continue on like this I think I might move out of the plasticave, if I feel like it that is, it takes a lot of effort to keep myself warm when I'm not in it you know.

Well that was just too much effort and so, a job well done, I decided to do what I do best: Have a nap.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring, I sure would like to.. see.. that..... nice.... lady.... a....g...a..i...n. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I got this idea from Aunty Rachel, so I don't want to take credit for that, you should check it out on her blog, it's far better than mine http://yokomatsu.blogspot.com/

Role reversals

A strange thing happened this morning which left me slightly bemused, Deb said to me "are you ready to go yet". This has never happened in the history of our relationship, it is a phrase often uttered by me, but never by Deb. Safe to say that she was fairly eager to get back down to the hospital as early as possible, and so thats what we did.

We came in to find that Sophie was on a new monitor, they had decided after her bath last night not to put new electrodes on her and so the monitor that she was on was now redundant, she still has the oxygen saturation one on her foot, which can also give a heart rate and she also has a little pad under her mattress that will alarm if she were to stop breathing. This is great because it means we have more freedom to get her up and put her down, we can take off her foot thing and then she is wireless! We are also getting pretty good at positioning her, we were complimented on it by the nurse today. It is not as easy as you would think either, she has to sort of be in the recovery position with a snake pillow or rolled nappy down her front, between her legs and up her back. This is to give her boundaries, to keep her mostly on her front which helps with breathing but to keep her off her direct front which helps her hips.

Cutesy pic for the day, this was before her electrodes came off.

One thing that I have neglected to talk about so far is Sophies weight, when born she was 1680g, a few days later she had dropped to 1540g, nothing too much to be worried about there as most parents will know. She stayed at about that weight for a wee while and as of Friday had gone back up to 1610g. So the main point here being that she has started gaining weight, meaning she is getting enough nutrition on her fortified milk alone.

She does the most cute little sneezes you have ever seen, I have been trying to get one on video but it is much harder than you might think. She seems to sneeze a lot, which I have been attributing to the fact that I sneeze a lot but in reality is probably because she is being irritated by the tube in her nose. So unfortunately no vid today, sorry.

Another interesting factoid: A good way to settle Sophie if she is a little bit upset is to gently cup her head and but and put gentle inward pressure on both. We are told this simulates the pressure and boundaries they would have in utero, and it really works! Jo also tried it on Lilly with some success.

There is one thing I know for a fact. Sophie is hands down the most beautiful gorgeous and cute baby in the world ever. I know this for a fact, the only problem is that I suspect that every other new parent in the world knows it for a fact about their baby too. I walk past the other baby's in the NNU and each time I see one I think, 'Sophie is much prettier than him/her', but I have seen the looks on the other parents faces thinking the same thing about Sophie.

I am right and they are wrong.

To bath, that is the answer.

Turns out her tummy was just too small to fit 26ml in :(

A little bit of a dispointment but there is a silver lining, turns out she is not the first baby to not get to her target feed level and that they have a back up plan, surprise surprise. They are going to fortify her her breastmilk with something that will boost the calories in it, in this manner she will get the food she needs in the 23ml she can fit in. So her drip could come out after all, and it did, choice.

So we got to give her a bath

Now this was my first time bathing a baby, yet alone one so tiny and it was an education. Filling the bath, unwrapping the baby, easy. Picking up the baby and transferring her to the water and holding her there whilst simultaneously preventing her constantly wriggling soapy slippery body from slipping out of your grip, not easy. Then you have to let her go and hold her with one hand while you use the other to wash her! A feat of co-ordination that I was proud of even though I chickened out half way through and held her with both hands while Deb washed her. Phew, that finished we got her dried, dressed (and this was the first time she wore clothes) and fed and what did she do? Why she chucked all over her clothes of course. So it was undress, clean and redress and then what did she do? Why she had a poo of course. Can you see a pattern forming here? Never mind, we love her all the same.

We covered out her privates to preserve her dignity a little bit :)

A bit more on Deb, as mentioned in the first post in this blog one of the symptoms of her pre-eclampsia was foot swelling. Paradoxically her level of swelling went up after the birth and was causeing her a bit of pain, despite my foot rubbing efforts. This was something to be expected apparantly, although we weren't warned about it and it can take up to 6 weeks for it to correct itself. Not my Deb though, just over 1 week and now her legs are coming back to normal, Yay.

Deb has come home for one night tonight, will do her good to get out of the hospital for a while although she has found it hard to leave I think it is good for her to come home now while she can, because when Sophie gets on the breast she won't be able to. She was given a breast pump to take home with her, great that they should supply her one but wait till you see it, it really must be circa 1950! It weighs in at about 20 kilos and is a VERY solid piece of engineering, we were a little bit disappointed with it at first but now that it is home and set up and we don't have to move it around it is actually quite good, not too noisy and does the job well. I bet the light little plastic ones she has been using up until now will not be working in 60 years time.

Thank goodness Debs friend Lorraine has been very generous and donated us heaps of baby stuff, including a small portable breast pump, so if you read this, thanks heaps Lorraine.

And now for the main act, todays cutesy pic and vid. The picture is of her in her first clothes, and in the video she got the hiccups, which was just a delight and so we just had to video it.

Don't know if I can keep up daily posts now, if you have ever written a blog you will know that it takes a lot of time and effort. So there might be a post tomorrow and there might not, so check back anyway.

The Marsupials will show us the way.

First of all I would like to say thanks to everyone for their positive comments about this blog and their well wishes for our family. At least I know that I am not wasting my time and people really are intersted and care about us, which is great :)

As predicted it was a pretty crappy day today so we didn't get to spend much time at the cemetery with Sarah. We gave her some first birthday preasents, which I think she would have appreciated and made her headstone a little more colourfull. Sophie now has a picture of her own personal guardian angel in her incubator with her, I am sure she can't focus on it yet, so I guess in one respect it was for our benefit more than hers but the sentiment is nice.

Here she is again, doing the "Dr Evil" post naso gastric tube insertion.

They moved the goalposts on her a bit today, they decided she would need to get up to 26ml per 2 hours not 21, but not to worry she is up to 23 and going strong. We have also been able to get her up wrapped in a blanket like you would any other newborn and hold her while she is having one of her ever more frequent wakefull periods. We seem to be falling into a bit of a pattern whereby she can be got up, changed, fed and have a cuddle every second or so feeding, so every 4 hours or so, it just depends on wether she wakes up enough to make it worth having a cuddle and to interact with her. Something that I havn't mentioned as of yet is that she really does sleep a lot, and I mean probably 22 hours out of the day, but that is also getting better.


She has also been moved into a smaller side room, still in her incubator but out of the main hustle and bustle of the main area. She was moved to make room for possible newcomers and there was indeed a few new additions to the neonatal community today, they really seem to be coming and going all the time.

Grandma Judy and cousin Gabi came and visited, they timed it well and she was having a feed and nappy change, during which she woke up, wide awake and so Grandma and Gabi got to have a hold. Both of them seemed to be delighted with her, and how could you not be? Gabi got all clucky which was nice, Gabi if you are reading this I think that you will be a wonderfull mother someday.

Another vid of her having awake time.

I mentioned Kangaroo care yesterday and promised I would explain so here it is. Kangaroo care is another way of saying skin to skin contact, this is something that is encouraged in all newborns and to put it simply involves having the baby naked on your bare chest (nappy on), and it is not only for Mums although Mum is probably best because she has the milk factories. There has been a lot of studies done on this and they show that the babys generally do better when they get plenty of this one on one contact. The name presumably comes from the fact that marsupials, kangaroos included rear their young (which are born earlier than in other species) in this way. We saw Sophie benefit from this directly, in the first couple of days when she was having brady's and apnoeas the frequency of these noticably decreased when she was having a skin to skin cuddle, there was just enough stimulation from listening to our hearts beat, feeling us breath in and out and making the thousand tiny adjustments we make all the time without knowing to keep her from slipping into the bradys and apnoeas. It also helps with bonding and I can personally atest to that: The moment when she first was gently placed on my chest, her beating heart so close to my own and she lifted her head up looked around and then seemingly found me and stared into my eyes was a life changing moment, it will be etched onto my brain forever and will be treasured with my most precious memories.

Deb having "roo" time.

I realised today that I had fallen into a sense of security about Sophies progress, and to be sure she IS making good progress, better than could have been hoped for but on relfection she is still not out of the woods yet. She has a clear path to follow and Deb and I (and the good staff at the NNU) are holding a hand each to guide her but in the end she will have to be the one to find her way out.

Deb is doing great too, making another one of her super human recoveries. She refuses pain releif where others would be crying for more and stoically bears the sleeplessness. She amazes me every day and will probably continue to do so, although I should probably tell her so more often.

I funny thing happened today: I was sitting today holding Sophie, all was quiet and she was very alert and looking around when one of the other babys started crying. I looked at her and I could have sworn she did a huge eye roll, it wasn't of course but it was damn good impression of one and really made me laugh.

Tommorow... To bath or not to bath, that is the question.

Meal times will never be this easy again.

Sophie reached a couple of small milestones today, one she didn't have ANY Brady's or Apnoeas! Yay. The second was that she got up to 14ml of milk every two hours for her feeds, doesn't sound like much but it is a lot for such a tiny wee thing.

I havn't explained about feeding so let me try. Sophies suck and swallow reflex has not yet developed, therefore she cannot feed directly from the breast. This has two major flow on effects, the first is that she needs to have a tiny tube inserted into her stomach through her nose and down her throat so that her milk can be administered directly into her stomach. The second is that Deb has to express her milk.

Our wee girl pre naso gastric tube insertion.

Now expressing milk doesn't sound all that onerous but it has been responsible for us getting a taste of the sleepless nights associated with being new parents. Deb having had a caesarian was not in a position to be constantly getting up and down to get the breast pumping equipment so that duty fell to me (I had been sleeping in with Deb all along anyway). So, every 3 hours and every 4 at night the ritual is: going down to the "milk room" getting the pump, removing the gear from the Milton (sterilising stuff) and asembling it, bringing it back to Deb, waiting while she does the deed, 10 to 30 minutes depending, storing the product, disasembling the gear, cleaning the gear and replacing it in milton, returning the pump and if at night, going back to bed.

What a polava.

I was going to get a Fonterra sticker and put it on my back but didn't think that it would go down well with the other Mums :) I kept this up until she was able to move about and now she is doing all this herself losing sleep while I at least get to sleep through the night, that is if I can get the two of them out of my head for long enough to get to sleep.

Back to Sophie.

So the idea was to start her off on 1ml of milk (colostrum at first) every 3 hours and build our way up to 21ml every 2 hours. In this way her drip can slowly be tapered off until she is up to the 21ml, then they can remove it and we will be able to bath her!

Baby steps

The feeding process is quite interesting, first the attach a syringe to the feeding tube and suck all the air out, burping will never be so easy again. They then attach a syringe with the appropriate amount of breast milk in, remove the plunger and the milk syphons into her stomach under gravity. It takes 1 or two minutes. Meal times will never be so easy again. We are learing to do this ourselves but the Nurses still take care of the timings and amounts. So she is slowly being increased in this manner as she can tolerate it and I am pleased to say she is tolerating it well and will be up to 21ml in no time.

We had a timely reminder of just how well she is doing compared to her peers today, she had a new neighbour turn up today. A wee boy of the same gestational age as Sophie, poor little chap had to have the CPAP machine put on and so is pinioned on his back with this great hulking tubes stuffed up his nose forcing air down him. It is a well studied and accepted fact that pre-term girls do better than boys. When we asked our specialist why he just said that Men have always thought they were the stronger sex but they were wrong, that one is for all your ladys out there :)

Now for the real treat of this post. When I arrived today Sophie had been sleeping for quite a while and we wanted to get her up for a kangaroo care session, will explain about those in tommorows post. So we turned her over to change her nappy (and yes she wees and poos like any other baby) and by the time we had finshed with that she was WIDE awake, looking around and genearlly just being a gorgeous little girl, and I took some video, so here you go.

Isn’t she just a pet? My heart just bursts with pride every time I see this.

One other thing of note happened today, she had the dreaded IV line changed from one arm to the other. Strangely enough she tolerated the procedure well, thanks in large part I believe to the pain relief she received. This is another of those “wow that is really interesting” moments, the pain relief consisted of nothing more than sucrose solution, sugar water dripped into her mouth, and it really worked! The trouble started when they came to remove the old one which had been fastened with a splint and sticky (really sticky) tape, she had a fair paddy man, worked herself up into a real state, which we had never seen before, cried her little heart out poor thing, all good exercise for her lungs I suppose and she slept really well after that.

It is one year to the day tommorow (the 22nd) that Sarah was born and died. It is going to be a rough day I think, we plan to spend quite a bit of time down at the cemetery but the weather might put the Kaibosh on that. In any case we will be with her in our hearts, Sophie too, even if she doesn't know it yet. If you want to do something for us and her just take a moment to remember her if you met her, if not just know that she existed and that she was a person and that she was loved, the fact that she exists in your minds and hearts, if even for the few moments while you read this gives me solace....... Thanks.

Perhaps I should have called this post "tears on the keyboard"

Let the roller coaster continue.

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!

A Rude Awakening.

To be sure, 31 weeks is very early for a baby to be born. The baby is fully formed with two major exceptions. One, they are small. Two, their lungs are not developed as they are not expecting to have to inhale air for another 9 weeks. For this purpse Deb was given steroids which can mature the babys lungs in quite a short period of time, they had started her on them before the final diagnosis was made and so by the morning of the 15th (thurs) she had had 36 hours worth of them which is long enough. So thankfully the final story is that she has a very good chance of being 100% fine at the end of our journey togther but there is going to be a long road getting there. More on that later.


At this point I would like to make a special mention of Angie. Angie is a freind of Debs who she met through the SANDS group. She is a Midwife at the hospital and has been absolutely amazing in her level of support for us, if you read this Angie a million thanks to you, if it weren't for you we may have ended up in a pretty grim situation. She took her own personal time to check Deb on the Monday, and has been just incredible with her help and support. The photos you are going to see on this post were taken by her.


The day of the 15th started early with Deb being prepped for surgery. We were taken off to theatre at about 0815hrs where we met the Anaesthatist who was great and friendly with a good bedside manner which put us at ease. Deb was wheeled away from me to have her spinal anasthesia done and I was taken to get my scrubs on.

Us before we were separated.

Now nobody told me that we would be separated nor indeed that I would have to wait while they did the spinal. I was ushered to a waiting room and left alone for 30 minutes to stress my pants off, I found out later that they had trouble with the spinal and nearly gave up and gave her a General Anasthetic which would have meant that I would not have been allowed into the theatre! As it was they finally came and got me and ushered me into the theatre, I approached deb from her head end and they had the screen up so all I really could see was her head.

In theatre.

I was only able to talk to and reassure Deb for a few minutes when I asked if I could have a peek over the curtain. Good timing as just as I stood up and looked over the curtain they had just opened the unterus and started suctioning off the amniotic fluid. The doctor reached in, and out came Sophie.

An ear peircing wail then filled the room with sound and my soul with joy. Sophie was crying and to me that meant one thing, good lungs.

Gory but glorious.

The peadiatric team then whisked Sophie away to the incubator standing ready to check her over and clean her up, they dressed her in woolens and there was only time for me to quickly cut the cord and then meet Mum before being take off to the Neonatal unit.

 

Mum and Daughter meet for the first time. Doesn't deb just seem a perfect picture of happiness?

I went with Sophie to the NNU and stayed with her while they sorted her out and attached all the cords which took some time. When she was settled I went back to theatre to make sure Deb was OK and to change out of my Scrubs. Then I accompanied Deb back to the post natal ward via NNU where she could spend some time with Sophie. A quick trip upstairs to spread the good news and then back down to NNU.

Phew! (said whilst wiping forehead)

Sophie was brought into this world 9 weeks ahead of schedule, at 0918hrs on the 15th of October 2009 weighing in at 1680g (3lb 11oz) with a full head of hair and a full set of lungs. I cannot describe the emotions charging through me, unbridled joy, incredulous admiration for the amazing Woman who had made this little miracle possible, heart bursting love, paternal protectiveness, concerned worry all tempered by grief for the sad fact that Sophie would never get to meet her sister Sarah.

Coming up, settling into neonatal, premmies issues, and anxious moments.

How did we get here?

To cut a long story short - Pre-Eclampsia.

To make the short story long again - here goes.
Despite debs history she had been having a rather un-eventfull prgnancy, we had been attending our appointments with the specialist Dr Brooks diligently and all seemed to be going well. On the afternoon of the 12th Of October 2009 having visited the specialist just that morning Deb started feeling dizzy and light headed. We rang her friend Angie (a midwife at TBH) for advice and we decided to go down to the ante-natal ward to get her checked out on a better to be safe than sorry basis. It was noted at this check out that Deb had a raised blood pressure and protein in her urine, two of the first signs of pre-eclampsia. It was decided then that she would be admitted for further testing to determine if she had pre-eclempsia or not, this involved collecting a 24 hour urine specimen to enable exact quantitation of how much protein she was losing in her urine and 4 hourly blood pressure checks.
I stayed with Deb that night and we spent a long day on tuesday the 13th waiting, wondering and stressing about what was going on, regular blood pressure checks showed that her blood pressure was remaining at the same mildly elevated level.
The 24hour urine collection was finished that evening and sent to the lab but the results were not to be available until the next morning, so we were condemned to another night of worry and sleepless waiting (I was trying to sleep on the worlds most ancient and squeeky lazy boy). You can only imagine the worst case scenarios running through our heads, our history did not permit us to be optimistic.
The next morning Dr brooks came in and sat down, we were immediatly worried as this was quite out of character for him. He then stated quite matter of factly "it's not good".................... the most painfull of pregnant pauses followed during which time all permutations of "how can this be happening again" and "there must be some mistake" went wizzing around my brain. It turns out that Deb had 2.6grams of protein in her urine over 24hours, the cut-off level for diagnosis of pre-eclampsia is 0.3g. So we were given the news that Deb definatly had early onset and relativly severe pre-eclampsia.

F*%K

What kind of crappy God damn shitty luck is that. Not only is this the second major complication of pregnancy in 2 pregnancies but it is very unusual to get pre-eclampsia in a second pregnancy!

We were then delivered in news in the same matter of fact way that not only was Deb in increasingly grave danger but the only cure for this was immediate delivery of the baby and that a theatre had been booked for 8:45am the next day for a semi-planned caesarian section.

Sophie was to be born at 31 weeks and 2 days gestation.