March 23
Ivanna Marie was born on March 20, 2018 at
3 pm, her birth weight is 390 g, gestational age 24 weeks and 6 days. It’s day
3 of her life and she is doing so well! She will stay in NICU (Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit) for the next few months and I am with her daily.
Now about how it all happened… The morning
of March 20 Dr. Stefania came to do the ultrasound herself, she knew that this
could be the day according to previous ultrasound report. She told me that
Reverse-absent Doppler flow increased as it would be expected and it means my
baby could have minutes or days, we don’t know, but if I want to do everything
to save her, then now is the moment.
The one moment I will never forget, and when I
think about it - I can hear this sound in my head so clear, it was exactly 2:59
pm on the clock above me, and I heard something you would never expect to hear from a baby of this
gestational age, and it is a sound of baby’s cry… not load… a cry of a very
tiny baby. A fighter baby… baby Ivanna. The happiness I felt cannot be compared
to anything, I was crying, Andrey and my sister who were in the operating room
also starting crying from happiness. From that point I knew that this is it,
this is my miracle, my daughter, my princess-fighter.
Doctors were amazed. She even refused to be intubated with a ventilator tube since she was breathing well on her own. I was able to see and touch
her as soon as the numbness from epidural wore off. I was in a lot of pain but
I went to spend time with her as much as I could during the 48 hours while I was
still admittee at the hospital.
Doctors say that the first 72 hours are the
most crucial, that’s when the baby adjusts and major interventions at this
point could be critical, but she did not need any interventions in the 72
hours, she already graduated from this first milestone. Her head scan in
normal, blood results as well, her sugar was normal and still is and she has
been fed 0.5 ml of my breast milk every two hours. The first two days she
refused to take a ventilator (doctors tried to put her on it to help her
breathe but it came off), she was too fussy and crying when they tried doing it, so they
decided not to ventilate her (she was still put on it today though since her
lungs need this aid for now while she is so tiny). The only thing we are waiting is for her to poop
and it is expected that micro-preemies don’t poop in the first 48 hours.
I am so amazed at the support system that
the hospital has for families in this kind of situation. I can go on and on
about it and I decided to write more about it since it could be a good resource
for others. So I will try to slowly cover a few aspects in the next posts.
About us – and thank you everyone who is
asking for your care… these three days were very busy and I wasn’t able to
respond to a lot of your messages. Of course there is so much quick learning
and so much information that we had to process in the last three days.
Our main priority right now is breast milk
(yes, I will explain why) and organizing our life around our baby. We are so
blessed that the first priority is settled now and it took quite a bit out of an
in-pain on meds mama but it had to be done and I am so happy it is going well.
Micro-preemies can’t survive on formula,
they could on donated breast milk, but of course I only want her to have my
milk. The nurse (there is one nurse per new NICU baby at a time!) feeds it to
Ivanna through the tube (0.5 ml every two hours) and she also gives a little
bit to her mouth so that she feels my smell and her digestion slowly adjusts.
I am so glad that NICU invests so much into
this important aspect; they even gave us a breast pump for home without
charging any rental fee ($3000 worth one and we will return it after the baby
is discharged) but they also gave us $210 worth of pumping parts completely for free! Each
NICU family gets it because of some guy’s humongous donation!!! It’s amazing
that you don’t have to worry about this… Andrey went to get it the morning
after the c-section and the nurse taught us how to use it, how to sterilize the
parts etc before I was discharged from the hospital. My baby’s room (there is
one baby per room and I can sleep there on the couch if I want to) also has a
pump so I need to only carry the parts and I can also use the hospital’s
sterilizer. Now I am producing so much extra milk that we are freezing it for
the times ahead, I am so happy about it. It was crucial that during those two
weeks that I spent in the hospital before birth, despite all the hard things
happening, I was able to pull myself together and not stress out, eat well. It
is very typical for a woman not to have breast milk after c-section for days or
not have a lot of it and stress/nutrition are major factors.
I am doing well, it’s been three days since
the c-section and post-surgery pain is still pretty intense but today I stopped
taking pain meds since it’s getting better… and I want milk quality to be better. So we
will see if I can manage. I was discharged last night and went home to sleep
and finally see my puppy after more than two weeks (he is so huge now!).
Today we went to see Ivanna and later had
to do so much around the house, do a lot of errands, it was a very busy day. I
had to prepare and organize everything so that I can start spending most of my
time in NICU with her.
Our lives in the next three months will
look like this: Andrey will drive me to NICU (it’s a half hour drive without
traffic) at 6 am each morning and pick me up around 7-8 pm in the evening. On
some days I will sleep over at NICU especially once I will be allowed to
kangaroo her more (soon they will start allowing me to put her on my chest, for
now I can only hand hug her). I have to pump milk every two-three hours,
including at night, so it is going to be a different life. I have to eat well
so there is not much time for doing that but this is the parent life. Parent
life has kicked in faster than we planned and it’s a different kind of parent
life. Baby is not at home, baby is in the incubator… everyone tells me that NICU
is something you have to take one day at a time, there will be many high and
lows, it will be a very difficult experience.
I am taking it one day a time and I
praising God for every little victory. It is all because of Him only.
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