Sweet Zoë

Zoë is back under the biliruben light for a few days. Yesterday, her levels jumped from 4 to 8. Today, they are back at 4, but they want to get them lower. That’s all fine, except I can’t hold her while they are using the bili light. And, she hates it. It’s bright and they take the cover off of her incubator, which increases the noise. She wiggles and squirms and pushes herself up off the bed and lunges forward. And she cries. Last night while I tried to read to her and reassure her with my hand on her bottom, she scrunched up her face and opened her mouth and tensed her entire body. She can’t make any noise and there aren’t any tears, but you don’t have to have seen many newborns crying to know that’s what she was doing. It broke my heart and made me wonder. I know when she does that, she sets off her alarms, but most of the time when her alarms go off she’s given time to bring things back under control herself so no one comes to her bed immediately. How many times has she cried and no one has noticed and tried to comfort her? Last night was not a good Mama night. I’ll be glad when she’s done with the light and I can hold her again. I know she’s doing well and things are progressing the way they should, I just wish there were something I could do to make her tiny world a bit more comfortable and soothing for her.

She weighed 1lb 15oz yesterday morning, but then she pooped 9 times yesterday and put way too much energy into wiggling so this morning she was 1lb 13oz and change. Such a tease! They are adding a calorie-rich oil to the 6mL of milk she gets each hour to plump her up.

We’re suffering from extreme photo withdrawal around here. The bili lights make it hard to take photos. They screw with all the colors and make her skin an awful shade of blackish purple. Hopefully, by this weekend we can make up for it with a lot of new pics.