The Power of the Magical Blue Nipple

Ok, ok I know this blog is REALLY late, but hey I am a first time Mom with a baby to care for at home…Yes, you read correctly Brenna was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday-& yes it did come a lot sooner than I expected (I guess I blinked….). It took almost a week for me to be able to settle into a routine & get some sleep-there are no monitors at home so it took that long to have faith in the fact that she would keep breathing (Kevin & I actually had to have a conversation about this…..). Of course, I mean sleep in the loosest sense of the word, incremental naps is probably a much better description, but at least I do feel as though I finally have the brain function to put semi-coherent sentences together (but really, you should be the judge of that because I could be writing in martian for all I know…). To put your minds at ease (& I still keep reminding myself), do know that our little Bean had a wonderful & very good team of Doctors & Nurses & that they would by no means have let her go home with us if there was any reason for them to think that she wasn’t ready. As for us being ready, well……
This time last week I had hit a wall & honestly thought that Brenna had too-there was even talk about her going back on the feeding tube because she was having a hard time taking all her feeds by bottle & she was taking only the bare minimum at each feed. While other babies her age were happily still relaxing en-uteri, we were asking her to breathe, keep warm & eat all on her own- maybe we were asking her to do too much. She was, after all, only 35 weeks old & still so little (as the Dr’s kept reminding me-never a good sign…). I was beginning to feel as though we were never going to leave the hospital, & as much as I tried to be optimistic (after 2 months my sanity was starting to depend on it…); I know everyone around me thought I was nuts & believed that we were going to be there for the long haul. Life in the NICU is, after all, a marathon- set backs are to be expected & (in all fairness) I was told we were most likely going to be there until she reached term-I should have expected, no, I should have hoped for only another month in the NICU. As my Dad once told me- ‘hope in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up faster…’-all I knew is that the diapers (if not hands), were getting very full very fast……as optimistic as I tried to be, it was beginning to seem like we were never going home. Ever.
Dorothy may have had her red ruby slippers to get her home, but unfortunately (& trust me, I looked…) fancy foot ware is not something easily found in a hospital, let alone in the NICU . Ok, so yellow brick roads, flying monkeys & wizards aren’t so easily found either (I could argue for a Wicked Witch or two….), but there was a ‘Good Nurse of the East’ (or Naomi as she is also called) & she had something better than amazing heels (I can’t believe I said that….)-behold the magical blue nipple (insert angelic singing here) & it’s awesome power to get one baby home (insert more angelic singing here.) Instead of throwing in the towel just yet, Naomi suggested that we try Brenna’s next feed with a hi-flow blue nipple (versus the wicked low-flow white nipple we had been using) because maybe the problem wasn’t with Brenna remembering to suck, swallow, breathe & repeat, maybe it was that she was just tired from working so hard to eat. Naomi said this at the end of Brenna’s 9 am feed, one that Brenna had barely finished & had only finished after both Naomi & I had tried to feed her. I was willing to try but I was not expecting much-maybe I had begun to doubt the super specialness of my little Bean….What was I thinking?! A 4 ½ pound baby proved just how super-duper & extra special she really was, not only did she take her next feed in record time, she had eaten more than ever before! Through the very small hole of the magical blue nipple I could see there was light (albeit faint) at the end of the tunnel, end of the yellow brick road, end of the whatever-home was no longer a distant land (or tornado) away. From that feeding on Brenna continued to increase how much she ate, that evening we were at 60mL, or the amount that ‘babies that go home’ eat. This was all last Sunday morning, Monday we were asked if we wanted to room-in with her (which is a whole blog itself….), where we stay in a room with her over night at the hospital to see how she (& we) do. Tuesday morning the phone in the room rang ”‘what do you think about going home today?”
The diapers may have been full (& a little stinky…), but behold the power of the magical blue nipple & it’s awesome power to get my baby home.