Week 30, Day 4

It occurred to me that I should use Hannah's gestational age in the entry titles instead of the count of days since birth. She was born at about 24.5 weeks. Normal full-term delivery is at 40 weeks, which is the earliest, under the best of circumstances, that we could expect Hannah to come home.

Hannah is up to 1100 grams, or 2 lbs 7 ozs. They switched her from continuous feed to a meal (several ccs of milk) every few hours, which of course is more similar to the real-world pattern of feeding. Everything else is going OK.

Here's a photo of Hannah's hospital "room". The machines, from left to right, are the IV pump (lower left, currently unused), feed pump (upper left), blood oxygen monitor (not visible above the top of the frame), isolette or incubator (center) which includes a clear cover that is raised up out of the frame, ventilator (right).



Moving Hannah from the isolette into Carla's arms involves a maneuver called the "flying squirrel" by one of the nurses, where tubes and wires are gathered in one hand and Hannah, facedown and arms and legs flailing, in the other. Then Hannah gets to fly through the air to Mom's chest.