Own Time Own Target

a long hard cry

on hind sight, i guess it was long overdue

partly triggered or rather the straw that broke the camel's back came last night when I visited Baby V. Where I realised that after 5 weeks, her discharge is not going to be as soon as I had foolishly expected...

I had thought based on past experience that a premie baby would be discharged by the time she hits 2kg. Unfortunately in the euphoria of her recent good weight gains, I had forgotten/ neglected to factor in the requirement for her to learn to bottle feed well before being allowed to discharge.

It should have been a simple DUH moment... but

Add that to my recent witnessing of another (much bigger) baby gagging and coughing and crying when a nurse installed a new feeding tube, and my realisation that Baby V will have to have her next feeding tube through her nose (instead of mouth currently) so that her mouth will be free when suckling.

THEN i understood that another baby born on the same day as Baby V who started at a lower birth weight of 1.2kg+ (vs her 1.35kg) is now 2.2kg (vs her 1.8kg)... probably because his parents carried him unfailingly everyday for an hour and his mom had so much milk that the nurses told her not bring any more to the hospital...

and the walls came crashing down.

That it is not going to end soon, the isolation and loneliness of being tethered to a pump at home 24/7, the resentment of my life suspended in animation vs E being free to pursue his tri dreams where so much time is spent in training over 5-6 days in a week, pity for my elder kids, anger over my inability to carry Baby V to full term ... ... ... mixing extreme sustained fatigue over 5 weeks (s0 far and counting) with all the anger, resentment, pity, hurt... everything just came rushing through and buried me...

argh.

a long. hard. cry.

the first where i learned that a cry does not only make your eyes puffy and nose blocked, but your EARS blocked too...

well, like i said, long in coming and while it is the first I suspect will not be the last.

sigh.

hopefully the next one will not block my ears

Labels: to Despair

Baby V was born weighing 1350gm, and shrink (they say it is normal) to 1130gm at the lowest in the week after birth.



Since then, she has been gaining weight (mostly) steadily between 4gm (a Singapore 20 cents coin weighs 4.5gm) and 45gm (a 4-finger bar of kit kat) a day... with an average of about 20-ish gm a day so far.

It seems so little and insignificant, but every gram counts. 1800gm until she is able to be taken off the feeding tube to be bottle fed (below that, sucking may consume more energy than what she is able to take by mouth) and 2000gm to being discharged.

She is 1762 today. Just 238gm to coming home...