After braving the traffic of the Schuylkill, Sean and I arrived at the hospital shortly before 8 o’clock last night. Since Liliana didn’t need the heater bed anymore, they moved her into a hospital crib. I thought the change brought down the mood in the room, simply because the crib looked like a baby prison with all of its metal bars.

In any case, Liliana is doing well. She took 40 ml at her 9 o’clock feeding and her nurse said Liliana was going to get 45 ml at midnight, so they’re increasing the feedings by 5 ml every 12 hours now. Liliana’s body weight was taken last night and it turns out she’s 6 pounds, 5 ounces. Just a little more until she’s the same weight as when she was born!

For Liliana’s safety after she is discharged, Sean and I are required to take a CPR class which we are scheduled to take this Saturday. The nurse last night said that we should also take an NG class (NG, according to Google, stands for nasogastric) so that we know how to give Liliana feedings through the tube in case she can’t or doesn’t want to feed orally. After reading these instructions on inserting the tube, I’m not really sure how comfortable I would be with it. Sean is pretty adamant that all Liliana wants is to breastfeed naturally and his arguments for it are pretty sound, so hopefully when we do get her home we won’t have to resort to using a tube.

After her 9 o’clock feeding, Sean read Green Eggs and Ham to Liliana, during which she would look at the pictures in the book and Sean would tell me to come look because it was so cute. I declined because I was tired (I did laundry, dishes, and a lot of cleaning/organizing while waiting for a Verizon tech all day who never showed up) and had achy body parts (my milk-makers were full and my shoes were not comfortable.) As it was getting late and I was falling asleep, Sean began reading The Cat in the Hat, which I don’t think he finished.

After languishing in the one chair that was in the room (Sean hated this particular chair because it doesn’t recline like the other type of chair we usually see in the room) and complaining to Sean that it was getting late and I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I need to pump, they’re hurting, you have work tomorrow, you need your sleep…we finally left around 11 PM.

Once we got to the car, things got emotional. Sean expressed his dissatisfaction with people’s expectations of us as parents to Liliana. How we’re expected to be there every day, how I’m expected to do skin-to-skin care and non-nutritive sucking all the time (according to a sheet tacked up on the nurse’s board which was never explained nor shown to me), etc. It was 15 minutes of us coming to understand each others’ view points. All it boiled down to was that the both of us wanted Liliana to come home.

If Liliana’s feedings are progressing without any setbacks, she should be getting 50 ml right now and hitting 60 ml (2 ounces!) tomorrow. Here’s to hoping she will be home with us this upcoming week!