Sleep Deprivation

There is no rest for the weary in the NICU... and staying overnight is definitely not conducive to keeping this blog updated! I stayed overnight last night and am doing it again tonight. Despite the fact that I can't get any sleep while I'm here, at least I'm here. I feel much better about everything while I'm here, even though it really stresses me out! I think that's why I wasn't staying overnight very much- it's just so stressful to be here. Especially since she can't do on-demand feedings and gets hungry about 30-60 minutes before her every-three-hour hands-on and feeding time. There's nothing more frustrating than to have a hungry baby and know that you can't just feed her and make her feel better. So I think that, in order to manage my stress levels, I was somewhat avoiding it which ended up compounding the awfulness because I then felt very guilty. I'm still trying to work through this and figure out how to navigate... once she's home, I'm sure parts of it will be resolved. However, I'm terrified for her to come home! More on that later...

• She's been bottle feeding every three hours since Monday and is really doing a great job. She just needs to be able to take her full feeds entirely from the bottle for a full 24 hours, and then she can pretty much come home. She's tolerating her feeds and is finally up to her full amount, so that's an excellent sign! Right now, she's getting her special formula every other feed but will hopefully be switched to all breast milk tomorrow after the doctor sees her. We're also going to try breast feeding again- probably around 5am.
• She has been off the caffeine for two days now and has had no brady's or apnea events. Woohoo! Just three more days without one and she meets that criteria for discharge. She's making some great headway! The doctor said he's very pleased with her progress and that she's doing very well.
• Her PICC line came out at 5am this morning (well, technically yesterday morning. But it was 5am on 7/26) and we both handled it well! I couldn't watch, but I did look at it after they took it out and it was so long that it was quite scary! She didn't cry, and while I really felt like I was going to, I didn't either and I guess it helped that she barely even fussed about it. 
•  I skipped her 2am hands-on so I could get some sleep. I started to feel bad about that, but it's kind of necessary and the nurse really encouraged me to do so since I got so little sleep last night. But now I'm incredibly groggy from finally getting more than an hour and a half of sleep at one time and I'm not sure how I'm going to feed the baby and hold her afterwards without falling asleep myself. This is one of those times when I wish I wasn't so darned sensitive to caffeine, because it would really help out right about now. 
• I'm getting incredibly stressed about my work situation. It sucks big time that I can't stay home with her for 9-12 weeks like "normal" people do with their babies when they come home. Instead, I'm hoping and praying that my short term disability will be approved for at least a few more weeks so I don't have to go back to work right away after she comes home. But we also can't afford to entirely lose my income... I wish this wasn't so difficult. 

So that's that for now... hopefully I'll get some more pictures up soon. She's wearing her outfit again, sans the scalp IV from the last time. So if I can get a good picture of her at some point today, I'll be sure to include it. Just please pray that I don't die of exhaustion any time soon! lol.