Up to 30% of premature babies are born with an inguinal hernia. Well dang. I'm over here packing boxes since the high flow oxygen moved from 4 liters to 3 liters and today to 2 liters!! And then up pops this hernia, quite literally - you can see it when she pushes. Why so much for our tiny little baby? This baby has been through the ringer. Now she's gotta deal with this.
She's been going so strong. Every morning she pulls the feeding tube out of her nose. It makes me laugh when I call for the morning report and they tell me this. Why do they put it back in you may be thinking? Well, by nighttime she usually is too tired for just one feed. Yesterday she had the eye exam (every Monday, ugh, so gut wrenching - still stage 2 ROP) and a bath. So she was so tired. When people say "sleeps like a baby"...they are referring to this baby. She falls asleep HARD. Today she gets to eat on her own terms though. She was too tired for the 8pm feed but as long as she wakes up and eats a good amount here shortly, no more feeding tube. And that is just one more checkbox we've been toeing in order to go home.
The other is air...and we are so close! While we wait to see if she will need surgery for the hernia (likely); we will keep weaning her from high flow oxygen. Room air trials should start in the next day or two because she is so strong and doing so awesome at 2 liters. I'd like to remind you that lungs of babies in utero are the last things to develop and are usually considered fully developed at 36-37 weeks. She is 36 weeks and has been out working on this on her own for quite some time along with everything else she's had to figure out early. We see the light at the end of this long winding tunnel.
We are grateful that of all the surgeries we've seen happen to babies lately that this is the one. We've seen shunts put in a newborn's head for a grade 3 brain bleed. A baby coded twice last week on our row but was brought back and is now doing so well he's extubated and bottle feeding. We also learned that some hospitals don't resuscitate if a baby when it's born if isn't 23 weeks and it used to be 24 (just in the 1990s). This knowledge has been weighing heavily on my mind and my heart. I just can't believe that there is a mom that is 22 weeks here and if she goes into labor they will help her but another hospital might not.
There are no regulations on this. If you are lucky the hospital has standards, if not, you could be subject to the decisions of the doctor on a given day.
Babies born at 22 weeks will absolutely need resuscitation at birth. But in some hospitals, it is their policy not to offer this. They offer comfort care, where the baby is placed on the mothers chest to die, usually within a few minutes.
Some hospitals, especially in rural areas that aren’t equipped for very early premature babies may even do this at 23 weeks.
This is only 2 weeks earlier than Emilia was born!
I read a story of a mother that went to Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in Frisco and they were not going to offer her baby care if he were born before 23 weeks and she was in labor. They wouldn’t give her the steroid shot to help his lungs (the same Emilia received). This story has a happy ending though, she was able to transfer to Texas Health Presbyterian in Plano and get the steroid shots and deliver at 22w3d and has a healthy happy toddler now.
So before you pick your birthing hospital, check their policies to make sure they will help you if you ever have to go early.
As much as I want to go home. I know we really lucked out being at this hospital. It's been 10 weeks today. TEN weeks. The NICU team here are now family.
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