One Week Old Today!

Not only is today Grace's one week birthday, but she also got new real estate! She moved out of the temperature and air controlled isolette and into a mini crib! She is adjusting to the louder environment but learning to sleep through the noises. She loved her bath last night with Mom and Dad and just gave her Daddy full attention while he chatted with her for nearly 20 minutes afterwards. After his first day back at work, I think it was exactly what he needed.
We were moved back out of the private room yesterday and returned to our corner cove in the main NICU. It wasn't due to any changes in Grace's status, rather a census issue (the ebb and flow of babies needing certain types of beds and the hospital keeping certain types available). We are thankful for the day we spent there and Maleia is much more rested because of it. We may still move back; it is hard to know!
Grace's progress continues to be good. Although her bilirubin is going up again, the neonatalogist states this is normal, especially for breast fed babies. No lamp, just fun heel sticks every morning to monitor for now.
It seems the ticket to getting out of the NICU and going home is now feeding. They officially put Grace on a pathway yesterday. This is great because it means that she and I aren't trying to breastfeed every three hours, which is difficult and inappropriate for a premie to do. A pathway is just a fancy term for how she's supposed to show progress and criteria for discharge. Yesterday's criterion were to breastfeed for 20 minutes on 2 feeding trials. The caveat is that she doesn't get 4 different trials to make those two. She only gets 2 trials and has to get it for that day to count as a successful day. She made two successful trials yesterday and so today we moved to 3 at noon. She has already fed once successfully and I get to judge from 230- 300 pm whether or not she is signaling hunger enough to give it a go. With each successful day of meeting those goals, we get to move up another feed for the next day until we reach 6 feeds at 20 minutes each in one day. The neonatalogist says kids often get stuck around 4 feeds in one day. We shall pray, work at it, and see what happens!
This feeding plan puts discharge at a minimum of 6 days from now if all goes well. That would be next Monday. He said it sometimes takes up to 2 weeks if kids get stuck. I am encouraged by her spirit and what she's done so far. She is quite the fighter!