The “Car Seat Test”

Here’s the idea:  At the hospital, the babies aren’t up walking around or even sitting up at the table or in an office chair.  Instead, they spend their life laying perfectly flat or, on an adventurous day, at a slight incline.  While Lilly’s heart rate has been stable and she has had no episodes of bradycardia, they need to know that she’ll do equally as well sitting up in her car seat.  To assess this, they use the ingeniously-named “car seat test”.  Like I always felt tests in school should have been, it isn’t anything we could help her study for and the expectations were clear – sit in the seat for an hour and don’t have trouble with your heart rate or breathing.

I was proud to be commended by the nurses for actually knowing how to work the car seat.  The presumed ineptitude of fathers is distressing, but that’s a long blog post for another night.  I didn’t bother to tell them that Bethany and I took the seats out and made sure we knew how to work everything the day we bought them (the blog will be more accurate than my memory, but I think it was very early January).

  

 

I wonder if a class full of Middle School students could pass a just-sit-there-and-don’t-do-anything-for-an-hour test…

Lilly passed and has one less thing to do before she can bust out of the hospital.  She’s been a bit sleepy last night and today, so she’ll try again with her feedings tomorrow to see if she can muscle through 6 by-mouth feedings to graduate up to 8.

 

Josiah’s day was rough and I’d handle it exactly the way he did: scooting under the fluffy blankets and sleeping it all off.  When we got to the hospital today, the doctor told us that the CBC (“complete blood count” test – learn about it if you’re really bored) done yesterday showed his red blood cell count being very low.  She said that could be a significant contributor to his bradycardia (and associated need for caffeine) and to some of his sleepiness that was keeping him from progressing with his by-mouth feedings.  To address this, he received a blood transfusion (like Lilly did a couple weeks ago) this evening.  On its own, that’s a big ordeal, but they had to draw blood first, then put in an IV, and then keep flushing it (all between feedings when he should have been sleeping).  By the time everything was finished, he cried (I kid you not) whenever that nurse was near him.

Trying to get some rest BEFORE all of his excitement

 

Getting some sleep after everything…

We didn’t get any pictures in-between and tried to just let him have a break.  His transfusion finished while we were there and he’ll get a good night’s rest tonight.  They tell us to expect him to be doing better tomorrow and hopefully have a huge boost in his energy and exciting progress with his feedings.

 

We have these other pictures of Lilly from today:

On the scale, showing her weight at 1924 grams (4 pounds, 3.8 ounces) [Josiah weighed in at 4 pounds, 12 ounces].  She got a bath a few seconds later and appreciated it as much as the cats do.

 

Taken while working on a bottle and being pretty serious about it.

 

I hope we’re just about ready to start counting Lilly’s remaining days at the hospital on one hand!