Day 78 Postpartum. Happy due date Vinnie!

Yesterday (1st May) was Vinnie's due date - he is now officially a big baby in the neonatal ward! Our little boy has been doing well and continues to make good progress with both the steroids and high flow (he is slowly being weaned off both). He is now half way through the steroid course - 21 more days to go! The high flow pressure was turned down again this week and he doesn't seem to have noticed. All good news but I still find myself feeling extremely anxious watching for subtle changes in his oxygen each day. I so badly want to see Vinnie do well the next few weeks so we can hopefully start planning for him to come home.

Vinnie is starting to look very chubby - a side effect of the steroids. He is getting a little moon face from the drugs (cute on babies but not on adults, so I am told), this will go down once he finishes the steroids. Another side effect of the steroids is that babies often get very grizzly and ravenous when feeds are due. Vinnie is definitely a lot less grumpy since he has come off CPAP (understandably) but has his grizzly moments throughout the day. I am not sure whether this is just him or the steroids? The poor little guy has a lot to grizzle about anyway so we'll let him off (blood tests, blood pressure, suctions, sticky tape on his face, tubes up his nose... the list goes on).

Mum and Dad were down today and Grandad/Poppa/Bren got to have his first hold with the little guy. Dad is insisting that he wants to be called 'Bren' by Vinnie, which I think is terrible! I personally think he suits Poppa much better!

Still trying to get the breastfeeding established although this is not easy. I appreciate that this can be hard under the best of circumstances but our situation is far from ideal. The combination of my limited milk supply and Vinnie's illness are making this very tough. Although it is tempting to try bottle feeding this is actually harder work for Vinnie, so we will persevere a little longer. It is such a performance though... supplementary feeding tubes and nipple shields really detract from the whole experience. Although I feel like a big failure I certainly deserve a gold medal for effort.

Something that will be nice for Vinnie though is that I have secured some donor milk for him... this will be far nicer on his digestion than the formula (hopefully less wind for bubs). One of the other mothers at NICU is leaving with her little girl next week and has two freezer draws fill of milk that was going to go to waste. Luckily she is happy to donate it to us so I was pretty happy about that. Most other countries have a milk banking service but not little old New Zealand - which is a shame as I would love to not have to supplement with formula.

My career as a milk cow feels somewhat short lived and unfulfilled...