One month old

Happy One Month Birthday Clara! Although technically you’re still minus 1 day old as you weren’t due until tomorrow…

We’ve chosen another pretty dress today to celebrate her first month milestone. Her dress is sized ‘Up to 3 months’ so she has plenty of room to grow into it, but it keeps her legs more covered and the cool air off.

She can’t wear tights or leggings at the moment but at least we can get one frilly pretty sock on for now! Five warm toes are better than no warm toes.

Clara is now in ‘Up to one month’ sleepsuits, a far cry from the ‘tiny baby’ premature Vests and sleepsuits she was in just three weeks ago. What a little chubby we have here! Two weeks in Newborn size flew by, especially as she didn’t wear clothes for most of that time period, leaving us with about 30 unused newborn Vests and sleepsuits at home. Already this little girl has her own box getting ready to go up in the loft. If anyone has any advice on the best way to store old baby clothes, please let me know!

Dresses are currently the easiest thing to dress Clara in, much to my delight. They keep her legs free and accessible as all her wires are attached there other than the pipe from her tummy which can simply wind its way out from under the hem of her dress. As a result, I simply had to go dress shopping! Clara’s wearing the first dress today, picked by her favourite nurse called Ali:

In other news, Clara has been given 0.5ml of milk, which will be repeated hourly, via her nasal gastric tube. This is the first milk she has had in 2018 so a very exciting day for her even if she can’t taste it! The purpose of this milk is to line her stomach as it’s been weeks since she had any sustenance in there.

The surgeons examined Clara again this morning and are happy with how her tummy looks. No distended tummy, no soreness, or obvious signs of infection. They’ve also taken the bag off the end of her NG tube so everything should start coming out of her bowel pipe now which is great.

There’s also been talk about us moving ward. The doctor said he doesn’t know if we’ll go to the children’s surgical ward, as Clara is still monitored by the surgeons and has her next surgery in 1-3 months, or the ward for longer term patients. There are no plans set yet, but I can’t imagine it’ll be long until we leave NICU, making space for another baby who needs help.