First night off PN

Tonight is the night. We are trialling Clara on a night without PN to see if she can handle a night a week off going forward.

Clara’s been doing incredibly well lately, I’ve almost been too nervous to write it down as I don’t want to compromise anything!

She’s been piling on the weight, a result of significant increases in her milk consumption (100ml four times a day as of tomorrow plus one or two small bonus top ups!)

She now weighs 6.4 kilos – 14lbs!!

As Clara has proven she can absorb all of this nutrition, we are giving her a night off PN. Whilst this is lovely in the sense she’s detached, tube free, it’s actually incredibly important to give her liver a break from the potent fluids she’s given at high rates over 12 hours, every 12 hours.

At midnight we’ll do a heel prick to test her blood sugar levels (Sorry Clara! Such a horrible way to be woken!) and if they’re on the low side, we’ll feed her to see if the pick up. However, this little piglet has some excellent fat reserves now so I have my fingers crossed she’ll be okay.

I’m nervous but excited to see how she tolerates this. If she does well, we’ll continue this weekly going forward. This is a HUGE deal! Almost unthinkable now really.

Not only has Clara has all day (12 hours) and now all night off, but she’ll go straight into another day of being tube free tomorrow. That’s 36 hours of no PN (meaning no IV fluid or nutrition), so all oral feeds.

I will hopefully have a hungry little girl on my hands tomorrow!

I’m SO excited, but also very nervous. I don’t want her to get really dehydrated.

I’ll update in the morning, having slept with my fingers crossed.

…….

The update!

Clara did really well!

We tested her blood sugar at midnight and 5.30am, both times it was perfect.

Clara slept all night, although when we did her midnight observations I gave her 30ml of milk to tie her over for a bit longer. She lapped it up in a dream feed. At 5am, I offered her more milk in a small bottle but she only had a sip before drifting back off to sleep.

7.30am came around and we both woke up feeling good. Clara had an additional 70 ml of milk, taking her to 100ml since midnight. Bang on track.

She’s full of energy today, definitely her usual morning self!