Synagismadness

This outfit of Chloe's is my favorite. Thanks Shawna! The feet are my favorite part....
I wish you all could see the way I'm balancing my laptop on my knees while holding the baby right now... it's priceless, I'm sure...

Today was full already. Chloe saw her Ped this morning to review her progress and for her Synagis (RSV) shot. Her Ped is a nice, tall mormony guy with triplets (bless his heart - I would have traded one of them for a puppy...) so he "gets" the preemie thing. He thinks her weight gain is good (1 pound in 3 weeks) and that her color is good also. Her bili level is up (I KNEW it) but he's not concerned, so neither am I. Her skin looks great -- a few weeks ago I would have thought she was pale, but now I'm finding that she is just a white girl, like me. While in the NICU I grew accustomed to some of the "normal" things that go on with premature babies.

Like blood transfusions. When Chloe got her first blood transfusion, I cried. It sounded so barbaric for some reason, to give her someone else's blood. She had her first one when she was 7 days old. It wasn't a lot of blood and it didn't take very long to run it, but it was blood and it was disheartening to see it going into my baby. That was transfusion #1. The second was when she had her PDA surgery - the heart valve deal. That was a MAJOR stressor for me, but a walk in the park to the surgeon, and another reason for a transfusion. In her stay in the NICU she had 7 transfusions. Now that's a lot of blood. ANYHOW, I got to the point where I'd walk in and say "I think she needs blood, she's pale." Sometimes they would listen, sometimes they would just smile. The smiling would come from a nurse that wasn't Chloe's primary nurse and someone who had only glanced over her chart and thought she was a boy for most of the day...Her primary nurses would bring up my concerns to the Neo, who would then give me the smile. They would go over pro's and con's of blood and the reasons why they would or wouldn't give it to her. Most of the time after a transfusion she would be super puffy -- her eyes would be swollen shut sometimes. Those were the days....But now we're not in the NICU and I can't just turn to a nurse and say "my baby needs blood." I have to hope that she's making it on her own now. It's hard to trust that her little body is doing what it needs to do...

Today they sprung more than just the Synagis shot on Chloe - they decided to give her a few others, too. Three shots and two sore thighs later, she's asleep. She handled it like a trooper, much better than the 4 botched lumbar puncture attempts in the NICU, I'm sure. But that story is for a different day all together.