Abby's Story: Part 5 - Tuesday and Wednesday

On Tuesday I had to teach so I was at work all morning and into the afternoon. Cheyenne took her GED test while I was at work. I don’t know how she did it. Two weeks before she had delivered Abby via c-section after 3.5 hours of pushing and since then had spent almost all her available time at the hospital. I don’t know how she had the time, energy, or strength to prepare for it – but she is awesome like that. I know she had planned to go see Abby after, and really wanted to, but she was too exhausted and so wasn’t able to. This also meant I wasn’t able to go, which I was very sad about. That has been the only day since meeting Abby that I didn’t get to be with her. I know there will be many more days that I am not with her, but I still wish I could have been that day.

I worried about Abby a lot while she was in the hospital. She occupied my thoughts consistently, which was rather distracting. It also made it difficult to sleep. From the time we met Abby until after we got her home from the hospital I never slept more than 4 hours a night. I would wake up thinking about her and couldn’t go back to sleep. I worried about her being at the hospital alone. Not because I thought they weren’t taking good care of her – I knew they were. I think if you have to have a baby in the NICU you can’t get a better hospital than Cooks. All the nurses I met were fantastic! But they have lots of babies to care for – they pretty much only hold them when they are feeding them. Abby was on a 3 hour feeding schedules – she was fed at 3:00, 6:00, 9:00, and 12:00. Since they would only try to get them to eat for 30 minutes max that meant she was only held 4 hours out of a day unless someone was there with her. It is good for their sleep to not hold them all the time, but babies also need physical contact, and I felt like she may not be getting enough. Also, as I said, I don’t think the nurses tried as hard as I would to get her to eat – and they even said parents are better at getting the kids to eat – not only because you try harder, but they can feel your love. I wanted to be there to help her eat and heal and develop – and I wanted to help her get out of the hospital because I wanted to bring my little girl home! So I really hated that Tuesday! I also had a hard time sleeping because I was just too EXCITED!!!

I started fasting for Abby on Wednesday. I met Cheyenne at the hospital fairly early in the morning and stayed there with her and Abby most of the day. Wednesday was a very eventful day. A very good day. For one thing, she got a new doctor. I liked her previous doctor fine but he didn’t seem to be doing anything to help her progress. He just tracked her progress. The new doctor decided they needed to take a tough love approach to her eating – she took the feeding tube out. I was thrilled! The whole time I had been wondering why they weren’t doing that. I thought they were a little ambitious with how much they wanted Abby to consistently eat any way, but it seemed to me that she would have no motivation to increase her eating if after every failed eating (i.e. when she wouldn’t eat all they wanted her to) they fed her the remainder of her bottle through her tube. She would never really feel hunger that way. This doctor said that they would keep the tube out as long as she consistently ate 60mL on average with a goal of 90mL per feeding. (If she failed 3 feedings in a row they would put the tube back in.) She also had to consistently gain weight. She also said that if she was able to do that for 24 hours she would be released within 1-2 days after. Yippee!

Look - no tube!

She also told us about the “rooming in” process. In order to make sure the parents are going to be successful at caring for their babies after bringing them home they had parents spend 1-2 days taking care of the baby completely on their own, but while at the hospital. With Cheyenne maintaining her parental rights until Abby was 30 days old it was decided then that she would do the first day of the rooming in herself and then I would join her for the second day.

I talked to Cheyenne about having me put on the list of people that could visit Abby whenever. She talked to the nurse about it and they ended up putting Ryan and me both on, which was great! That made it so we didn’t have to always make sure Cheyenne was there, and so I could stay later at the hospital without breaking rules.

Abby ended up failing her first feeding after her tube was removed but they said it wasn’t a surprise since she had been awake for a long time at that point with her bath and the tube removal so they weren’t concerned. But I started praying that she would do a good job eating – I did not want them putting the tube back in!

I don’t remember what time Cheyenne left, but I stayed longer. I didn’t want to leave Abby before I had to. I planned to do whatever it took to make sure she passed all her feedings. Since Ryan was added to the list he was able to come by the hospital on his way home from work. He was only able to be there for a few minutes before we both had to leave. (Even though we were both on the list only parents could be there during shift changes – we weren’t parents yet.) But he was there long enough to give Abby a blessing. It was amazing! He told her that she would be strong and continue to heal. Also, that she will have no lasting problems due to the complications she has faced and that the reason for the complications was so she could get placed where she was meant to be. I got teary. I’m so grateful for the priesthood and for a husband that honorably uses it to bless others.

Before we left we met Abby’s night nurse. I loved her! I felt confident she would try really hard to get Abby to eat through the night. There would only be 3 feedings before I could get back to her so as long as she passed one of them I thought I’d be able to make sure she didn’t get her tube back in. I left hoping that she would be cleared for release (really for rooming in) the next day.