Sunday, April 5, 2009

Growing Baby

Abraham is 5 pounds 8 ounces and is 19.8 inches long. So basically he is a long, thin baby. Gee his daddy was probably the same way. He is getting a belly on him though. (Glenn will upload new pictures some time this week). He is up to 48 mililiters of breast milk plus additives every 3 hours. Even though the breast milk is high in calories they still add formula to it. I plan to talk to the dietician on Monday to determine what it means to be positive fatty acids on the stool. In case I did not mention this earlier he came back positive for this on Friday. No one over the weekend seemed to know what this meant. I hope that this is a not sign of milk allergy. From what I remember diarrhea and malabsorption are signs of milk allergy. It would be hard news to take if he can't have my breast milk. I have worked so hard for 9 weeks now to maintain it for him. He still requires high flow oxygen and an isolette. If he is stable in his temperature and respiratory status he will have his first tub bath this week. All his other baths have been bed baths. I am curious to see if he likes being in water. His daddy loves being in water, well if it's warm like Florida or Guam. He loves to dive and went a lot when he was stationed in Guam. Also Glenn obviously must like water; he has been a sailor for 15 years. On a side note during his first deployment the wives talked about sending mail to their sailors, I said "my husband is not a sailor, he is ... (I gave his job title). I had no idea that everyone is considered a sailor. I did not grow up around the military other than my brother that joined the Air Force when I was in the 3rd grade. The most I learned from that is that he joined, wore a uniformed, mailed us letters and pictures, went to the Gulf War and I did not see him again I was 30. He is still in the Air Force and is stationed in Japan. I last saw him when he came to my graduation at UW in 2006. Glenn took a late ferry back home and is currently still in route home. I am watching TLC, a c-section. I have never watched a c-section before wow no wonder I was in a lot of pain afterwards. This mother got to touch her babies; I did not get to touch Abraham until I got to the NICU later that day. This women is having 4 babies, 11 weeks early however they planned her c-section based on something with the cord for one baby that probably would have taken her life (I missed this part). I still wish that Abraham was born at a hospital with a NICU however I can not erase what happened. It just seems that his complications would have been minimal. Some days at Children’s he was not even stable enough to down the hall to CT scan. There was no choice but to transport him by helicopter to Madigan the day he was born. Bremerton Naval Hospital does not have a NICU. I did not know this the night my water broke. All I knew was that I needed to get medical attention and Bremerton Naval Hospital was the closest and where my care was getting set up in Washington. I was not expecting to have a baby that night.

4 comments:

  1. Don't worry too much about a breast milk allergy. It is very rare. It may be something to do with the additives that are being put in the milk, though.

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  2. Karen,

    I smiled when you wrote about your sailor. After knowing Larry for a week. I had to ask him his first name because everyone called him byhis last name or rank. Look at us now with out Sailors..who knew?!?!

    Sounds like Abraham is gaining like a champ, lets try to meet early this week and I can give you his things. Send me an email, I can meet you in u-Village.

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  3. I just saw the new pictures. You have a spunky little boy on your hands. I am so glad that he is growing and doing well with the oral feeds and tolerating other feeds so well. You are doing a great job, all the hard work will pay off.

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  4. Don't worry about Abraham being allergic to your milk. That is not usually the case, its more likely to be the formula that he would be allergic to. When I stopped breast feeding Jacob and put him on formula, he didn't tolerate it at all. There was not one formula on the market, not even the high dollar special ones that he could tolerate. Only my milk. To this day he still hates and doesn't drink milk. It took him a long time to even like ice cream and cheese.

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