Life in the NICU

Here's my daily schedule:

12:00 am-pump for 30 mins, set alarm for 4 am and go to bed
3:00 am- alarm goes off and I either sleep through it because I'm so tired, or I get up and pump for 30 mins
6:00 am- 2nd alarm goes off and I get up to pump for 30 mins and either go back to bed or eat breakfast
9:00 am- Maisie's first feeding of the day with me

At the hospital here's what I do all day:

 - I start out getting the nurse's report, or if I make it in time, hear the doctors' rounds
- Maisie gets her temperature taken, diaper changed, and is weighed
- Maisie tries to nurse for 30 mins (at the breast if I'm there, at the bottle if I'm not or if she's too tired)
-She's weighed again and the difference is subtracted from her prescribed feeding, the rest is gavaged through her tube (for example, she gains 20 mg after nursing, so instead of 45 mls of food, she gets 25 through her tube)
- I pump again for 30 mins to empty all the milk she didn't get
- I now have 30-45 mins until we start again, so I can go eat at the cafeteria, take a brief nap or call family

Maisie eats every 3 hours (at midnight, 3, 6, 9, noon, etc) and it seems like 3 hours between should give me lots of time, but somehow it's all taken up and I barely have a moment before it starts all over again. I get down to the hospital as soon as I can and stay until 10 or 11 pm when I'm too tired to stay any longer. Needless to say, I will be relieved when Maisie gets to come home! At least at home I can do this all in the comfort of my own place.

Maisie is growing daily- the docs have lowered the calorie fortifier they were adding to her milk because she was growing too fast! But she is still not eating well when we do nurse. From the bottle or from mom she's not getting enough to be discharged. I keep waiting for her little light bulb to turn on and for her to get her full feeding at once! I don't know if I can handle 5 more weeks of this!