6 Weeks

Today Elie is 6 weeks old. She is doing very well and staying healthy. I put her on the scale the other day and she was 5lbs 13oz. We did have a little set back. Last week I tried to get her to nurse during the day without any bottles and just bottle feed her at night. I did pump a few times a day but when the lactation nurse came out on Monday we weighed her and she had gone down to 5lbs 7oz. It was at that point that I decided that nursing her was not a major concern of mine and that I would rather her continue to gain weight. So I start full time pumping again only to find out that I had depleted my milk supply during the process and Elie had started to want more to eat. Not a good combination. So this morning it was decided that Elie would go on formula and I would stop pumping. It was not an easy decision to make. I do have enough stored milk to give Elie one bottle a day for the next 3 weeks. One of the nurses in the NICU told us that it is not about how much breast milk they get but just that they get some to give them the antibodies they need. I will have to say that not pumping/breastfeeding has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. It was really stressing me out which was not good for any of us.

We also had a sort of disappointing call from the doctor on Monday. They called to say that they had gotten the results from Elie's monitor and it did show that she was having a drop in heart rate even though it was not low enough for the monitor to go off and that there were episodes of apnea. I will say that Trey and I are pretty positive that the apnea episodes are false since whenever the alarm goes off and we look at Elie she is breathing just fine. We don't think the monitor always picks up her breathing. So we continue on the caffeine and monitor. They will come out next week and do another download and see what it says then.

Other than those things we are doing great. Cecelia is a great big sister and likes to help out.