A Tour, Thankgiving, and potty training!

This post will be combined with all sorts of pictures and updates... I figured since I will be scrapbooking a ton of pictures from Jaidynn's NICU stay, we might as well show you all what we see on a day to day basis ( when we visit) This first picture is her chart of her stats for the day, her oxygen levels, feedings, poopy diapers, weight gain/loss, any de-sats ( decreased heart rate, oxygen, or blood pressure) Of course this little table is used to thaw out her feedings, and keeps all the joyful needles, or test things in the drawers. We truly keep the biggest eye on this little machine. It tells us her stats, and will ring if its below or going below a certain number... the only thing we see often is her oxygen in her blood drops down often, but goes back up. Thats the blue 95 one.. today it was doing quite good! This is the machine that holds any oxygen tubes, and has the feeding tube as well. It seems so high tech, but only holds something so simple.

Here is miss Jaidynn today. She's doing well and gaining weight! she's up to 3 pounds 8 ounces ( she was born at 3 pounds 5 ounces and went down to exactly 3 pounds) She's tollerating her feedings as of now. She gets about 1 ounce every 3 hours. It doesnt seem like a lot.. but with the size of her belly it sure is!

As you see here, they have put back on her oxygen canula's. Its still at around room air, but its helping her remember to breath while she sleeps. Most preemie's have this problem I'm told. They go into a deep sleep and their tiny brains do not notify the lungs to continue to breath.

This picture is blurry sorry!

I had Jeff take a side picture to try to get a picture of all her hair. Its so cute, and the NICU nurses love putting new bows in her hair. I think every day she has a new bow!

We got a rough goal set for what will be expected these up coming weeks.. Basically we are doing non nutritional feedings, where they have the mother pump before coming in and than see if the baby will latch on. Jaidynn has done okay with this, but she's always so sleepy that its a task to wake her up! Also they will be taking her out of her isolette probably sometime with in the next week. They will test her to see how she manages her temperature and I will be able to bring in baby clothes for her to wear! She'll than graduate to a crib in the NICU!

Also they said this next week Jaidynn will start to show signs of eating by mouth. This will be the biggest goal yet. She has got to learn to eat 3-4 ounces by mouth every 4 hours before she can be discharged home. It seems like so much, but in a 7 hour period Jaidynn gained 1 ounce, and they have upped her feedings again, so hopefully within the week she will be taking food by mouth.

THANKSGIVING!!! This year we had 3 stops to make. Sadly enough I only remembered to take pictures at Jeff's mom's house. I think because there wasnt so much interaction as the first two places we went... First we got to have dinner at my grandma's, which was delicious!! The Turkey was great, I got to catch up with family members, and Caitlynn did pretty well, second stop we made was at Jeff's dad's house. They had a great dinner there, and loaded us up with green/orange fruit salad. Thirdly we stopped at Jeff's mom's house. We had so much to eat at the other two places that we basically stopped in and ate dessert. It was still tasty!

This is Jeff and his brother Zac playing video games...

Caitlynn running around!

Potty Training! So we've officially began potty training. Its sad that after many attempts we are now 100% focused on it! Unless its bedtime.. haha. Caitlynn started taking a bath and told me she had to go "poo poo" ( I know you all wanted to know that, but most have kids so its normal.. haha) So I sat her down on her own potty but she didnt want to sit there, she wanted to big potty.. so we helped her up on the potty, and she pooped!! We were so proud of her! She hasnt quite mastered going potty yet, but for sure got down the pooping stage.. haha. Wish us luck for the upcoming days!! I'm hoping that by the time Jaidynn comes home, we will only be buying night time accidental pull up's and preemie/newborn diapers!! yay!!