In my excitement yesterday, I forgot to mention that Amaree has to do two things before we can breastfeed. First, she has to have her vocal cords checked. If they are damaged from the ligation, or PDA surgery, then breastfeeding is going to be more difficult. She is having the scope done tomorrow morning and we will know if it is damaged. 15-20% of babies who have had the PDA surgery have one of their vocal cords damaged. We are praying that she isn't one of them. We don't think that she has damage because she has a really strong cry, but we will know more tomorrow.
Secondly, tomorrow is the last day of the steroids. She has to stay on her nasal cannula and not back track and have to go back on C-PAP. She is on .01 of the steroids, and she was below 30% on her oxygen all day today. If these two things are good, then we are on for the breast feeding. We will know more a little later this week.
Andrew did skin-to-skin last night with Amaree. She LOVED it. She cuddled up with him and slept peacefully. Right before that she had an A & B. It stands for Apnea and Bradycardia. It means that she stopped breathing and her heart rate slowed. It was really scary. We think she did it because she was angry. She did it during cares and the nurse had to get her to breathe again. It was a level/grade 2 out of 5. It could have been a lot worse, but she scared us pretty good.
Today, we did skin-to-skin again. She latched for a few minutes but then she started to fall asleep so I didn't try much more. I just held her, but then she started to get fussy and she grabbed my finger and started to suck on it! I just gave her the pacifier and she sucked on it for ever. Then right before we left, the nurse did her cares at 2:00, and she was still sucking on it at 3:30 when we left. It so was much harder to leave her this time after actually having held her and cuddling with her.
I keep praying that she did not have any damage from the surgery and that all goes well this week.
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