Random thought

I usually eat with knife and fork together: I hold the fork in my left hand and the knife in my right hand.

The fork in the left hand usually either "spears" bits of food, or is held with tines horizontal so that the knife can push things onto it. (What I don't do is spear a bit of food [e.g. meat], then shovel on some other food [e.g. peas or mashed potatoes] on top—my father does this.)

If there's nothing that needs to be cut nor small things such as peas, I'll also eat with just a fork, in which case it's in my right hand.

And I've found that while I can eat with the fork in either hand, I can only comfortably use the fork in my left hand if I'm holding a knife in my right hand—even if I'm not currently using the knife! But if I lay the knife down, it becomes very weird to hold the fork in my left hand.

This was prompted by a post of noidd's here, which also linked to a Wikipedia article on the American way of eating (my style is the "European" method mentioned there).

[baby] State of the Amy

Sorry for all of my babbling—it seems as if all I write about is my daughter (and how much I worry about her). But maybe it's therapeutic.

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That said, the State of the Amy is "meh". While she had drunk quite a bit in the early hours of the morning and again at nine, and while the nurse was satisfied with her drinking yesterday evening, today when I was there, it was as before: she slept through everything and didn't drink.

They made some ultrasonograms of her head to see whether everything was there and in its proper place, which it was. The doctor who had done this told us that if everything went fine, we could expect to have her home "beginning or middle of next week"—if I understood correctly, they want to keep her for another couple of days just for observation, and then decide whether she can be released. (The tape that was written during the night was unspectacular, apparently, by the way, and it seems that she hasn't had another occurrence of "screaming herself away".) I believe she wanted to see the child gain some decent weight before she'd be let go, though.

And that's really the crux of the matter, perhaps. It was past one and more than four hours after her last feeding (that we knew of), but she didn't show any signs of wanting to wake up properly. Maybe a half-lifted eyebrow exposing the white of the eye (which looked pretty scary, as if she's blind or something), but that was it. Even when we changed her nappy, she didn't wake up or react at all.

I carried her around a bit and we tried to get her to nurse anyway, but she wasn't very coöperative. So I held her for a bit while Stella went to pump some milk so her breasts wouldn't be so full.

When she came back about ten or fifteen minutes later, Amy wasn't much more awake, though she did latch on a couple of times and suck for maybe thirty seconds before falling asleep again. (She'll have to practise opening her mouth wide and taking in lots of breast when we go home: she wasn't too good about that.) When I weighed her afterwards, she'd gained maybe a gramme. Big whoop-de-doo.

Oh, that reminds me: when I got there, I found a dummy ("pacifier" to you Leftpondians) in her bed, which didn't make me too happy. I took it out and looked for a nurse; when I brought it to her, she asked whether it had fallen down and I said no, I simply found it in the bed, and I'd prefer that she not get a dummy, and asked her to make a note to that effect on Amy's file. (To my surprise, I did find such a sticky note "No dummies, please" on her file when I looked a bit later. I hadn't expected them to actually pay heed to my request. Though I think I just told her no dummies and then five minutes later asked for an actual entry on the file.)

So anyway. Stella wasn't too happy but didn't think that Amy was going to have anything to drink anytime soon, so she put her down in her bed and told the nurse that she could be connected up to the monitoring equipment again. He suggested that we go outside for a walk or something, and he'd take care of her. We said that we were planning on going home for a bit anyway and he said that was fine, and noted down Stella's mobile phone number in case of emergencies. He said we should be back by half-past seven or eight (when the next feeding time would be?), and if she cried before that, he'd take care of her. (Stella has more than enough milk laid away, so I expect they'll use that.)

When we got home, Stella had a shower and started a load of laundry, and prepared the kitchen sink for me so I could wash up—pulled me away from writing this entry, she did. But while writing down my thoughts and worries and concerns may be therapeutic, she's right that something has to be done in this household and I'm the one who'll have to do his share.

She also expressed some milk by hand since her breasts were feeling really full and she didn't want to wait until evening.

So, hmm. Not sure what to do. Offering the breast every two hours seems to be a mere pipe dream at this stage; heck, even every four hours doesn't look as if it's going to happen. I mean, we can offer, true, but if she sleeps the whole time or only wakes up long enough to swallow five times, that doesn't help a lot.

And the nurse said that if she kept acting so droopy, he might have to get her blood bilirubin levels tested in case she's developing jaundice. Another woman in the room said that maybe Amy was jealous of the other newborns in the room: they all got to lie under the phototherapy lamp and she wanted her turn, too. Feh.

Though Stella said that would actually be a good thing: because if that's what's causing her problems, and the lamp will take care of it, then she'll be more active afterwards and drink better, which is good.

She said she reckoned she'd bottle-feed Amy while she's under the phototherapy lamp, though, since she needs more liquids then due to the heat and the stress, and she's simultaneously weakened by the experience, and may not have the strength to get all the milk she needs from the breast.

Speaking of heat: it really is quite hot in the NICU, as I noticed today when I was there for a bit longer than the previous days. And if a thermometer I saw in the window (attached to a part of a heating bed that was there for some reasin) was accurate, it was 30 °C / 86 °F.

Suggestions on how to proceed are welcome, but I really don't see right now how we can go through with the orthodox approach of "nurse early, nurse often, and only from the breast" with the way Amy is acting right now.

Photos

A couple new photos in my Photobucket and Yahoo!Photo albums, from the NICU, showing some wires and equipment in the background (the blue wire attached to her wrist measures the blood oxygen level, and the black, red, and yellow wires that can barely be seen on the same photo below her right hand go to the grey cable next to her foot, which measures heart rate and breathing.

State of the Amy

Like a yo-yo. This afternoon: meh; this evening: yay!

When we got back to the hospital after a couple of hours at home (cleaning up, Stella taking a proper shower, etc.), we found her awake, and the nurse said he had just called the ward where Stella's bed is asking for her to come up, so we arrived just in time.

We changed her nappy, weighed her, and fed her: only 10 g (0.35 oz). Hm. Not so good. But then we changed her nappy again to try to wake her up a bit and weighed her again, and this time she drank 50 g (1.75 oz)! OK, so I fudged a little by rounding her starting weight down a bit and her ending weight up a bit, but even without that, it'd have been around 45 g (1.6 oz). We then got to change her again, or at least take her nappy off, because the nurse came in and asked us to take her temperature when we change her nappy—two minutes after we had done so. Her temperature was 36.9 °C (98.4 °F).

When we told the nurse that, he said that both the amount she had drunk and the temperature were very satisfactory, and that he no longer saw a need for a bilirubin blood test, since she was drinking so well (and she had also drunk 50 g when he had bottle-fed her while we were away, when she had woken up).

After that, Stella went to pump some milk to relieve the pressure on her breasts, since Amy seemed to be done and no longer have interest in nursing; I held her during this time. She was awake the whole time, which she hadn't done before while I was there, and I talked a bit to her and hummed some songs. Once, she cried briefly, but was satisfied again quickly. She also made lip-smacking noises or opened her mouth and stuck her tongue over her lower lip, and I wondered whether she was hungry, even though she had just drunk so much.

When Stella came back, I asked her about it, but she said she was probably only playing around, especially since she seemed so content. But after a bit, she decided to try to nurse anyway, and though Amy at first just suckled a little, after a while she started drinking a little bit from both sides. And she stayed awake! I was so proud of her.

I hope this keeps up, and that the night shift calls Stella regularly whenever Amy wants something. I left just before nine to catch a bus and Stella left around the same time because she needed to eat her supper or her circulation would go wonky; fortunately, the last bit of nursing had made Amy sleepy and she didn't protest when we laid her in her bed.

If she keeps this up, then things look really good. Let's see whether tomorrow is up or down :p

I met one of the nurses from the night shift (shift change was from half-past eight to nine): she was Sister Claudia, the one who had picked up Amy on Thursday and brought her over. She seemed very nice.

Incidentally, on the way to the hospital, I met some Greek women and talked to them; they said they were also going to the Mariahilf hospital later, and indeed I met them again at the bus stop when I wanted to go home. I talked with them a little to practise my Greek; as a conversation starter, I asked them how they say "Harburg" in Greek.

I know that "Hamburg" has an accepted Graecisation(?) of Amvoúrgho (based on the spelling), so I wondered whether "Harburg" (the part of Hamburg where we live) would turn into "Arvoúrgho" by analogy or would simply be fitted into Greek phonology as "Kharbourg". It turned out that they say "Amvoúrgho" but "Kharbourg". Eh.

The woman said that initially when she heard me speaking, she thought I was a Greek who had grown up in Germany. I take that as a pretty good compliment. I surprised myself how much I remembered, though I occasionally lacked a word.