Week 33, Day 5, Second Eye Test OK

Hannah's second eye test today turned up nothing alarming. The development of her retinas is about where it should be for a preemie her age.

Since today is a slow news day, I thought I'd give you a rundown of what Hannah's daily schedule is like. She sleeps most of the day, of course, but her day is punctuated by "touch times" every three hours, when she gets a diaper change, manual temperature check (there's a temperature probe on her at all times, the manual check is just a backup), and anything else that needs to be done while she's awake and unswaddled. She also gets fed at each touch time, which for the moment means that the machine driving the feeding tube gets refilled with milk. She's now getting 3o ccs (about 1 ounce) of milk at each touch time, over the course of an hour. Eventually, they'll shorten that to 30 minutes, which is about how long a feeding session would naturally be. To be able to hold Hannah, we have to be there at touch time, since they don't want to disturb Hannah any more than necessary when she's this small. After touch time, she's wrapped back up and goes back to sleep. Usually, Carla goes in for the 3pm touch time, changes Hannah's diaper, then holds her until the next touch time and diaper change at 6pm. Then we go in around 10pm together to visit. Obviously, touch times are the best times to see and interact with Hannah, while she's awake and not wrapped up like a larvae.

As Hannah gets older and bigger, the rules will relax and she will "graduate" to an open crib in a less restrictive area of the NICU, where she lives more or less like a regular baby, just with lots of nurses nearby. That's our next big milestone after getting back off the CPAP, but it will be a few weeks.