Home again

Holly and Meeks are home again tonight. Meeks came home this morning and I went back in and picked up Holly around 5pm so she was able to have the maximum time under the blue light. We have another blood test on Saturday morning to determine if she's over the jaundice. We have to give her top ups of formula with each feed as well until then. So all in all good news and we're altogether as a family again. Yay!

Back in hospital

Holly (and Meeks) are back in hospital for another night of the blue light jaundice treatment (for Holly, not Meeks). We had noticed Holly getting more and more yellow/orange and lethargic over the last couple of days despite feeding well, so we rang the hospital and they advised bringing her back in for another treatment. Meeks will be staying in over night with her to allow her to feed. Apparently going back in for a second dose of treatment isn't too unusual and sometimes babies even have to come back in for three treatments. It will also be a good chance, hopefully, for Meeks to get some rest as well, although the stress of not being at home sort of counters that. I'm at home with the three boys which will no doubt be challenging :) All three actually slept through last night, so fingers crossed that happens again, or it could be tired, cranky Daddy tomorrow.

Hearing test and jaundice

Sorry for no update yesterday, I left my camera at the hospital last night. Never mind a double update today.

Yesterday was another good day at the hospital with Holly feeding well and Meeks getting a fair bit of rest over night. In the afternoon Holly had her hearing test which pleasingly she passed. Here is a photo with all the paraphernalia attached to her for the test

You may or may not be able to tell from the photo above, but she started to show a bit of jaundice yesterday. So today Holly had a blood test and it confirmed she needed some treatment. Neonatal Jaundice is fairly common in newborns affecting over 50% of babies in the first week of life according to Wikipedia. The treatment is putting the baby under blue lights. As you can imagine this creates some difficulty for photographing! Anyway, these are what I could come up with. She is very cute, even under these conditions!

She got some cool eye covers with a picture of sunnies on them to protect her eyes and help her to sleep as the light is quite bright. She will be under the blue light for 24 hours and then they will do another test to confirm she's okay. The negative is that she wont be able to come home first thing tomorrow morning as hoped. If the test tomorrow comes back is okay, she and Meeks will be able to come home tomorrow afternoon. We're all crossing our fingers, Meeks wants to be home and we all want her and Holly to come home!

Day 3 with Holly

It was Day 3 today and it was characterised by much better sleeping overnight and much better feeding throughout the day which is great news. Holly had some tummy time which she loves - she has a bit of a milk moustache - very cute.

Mitch has his last day of pre-school before the holidays and he and Lucas and Sam came into the hospital with Auntie Marion in the afternoon. There was lots of excitement and cuddles.

There were also gifts for the boys including an "awesome" encyclopaedia of Star Wars characters for Mitch

As usual, the boys found something else to be distracted by. On Monday it was Meeks catheter bag, on Tuesday it was the parking garage, today it was the garbage bins.

We also had visits from Tasha, Amanda, Auntie Anne Daisy and Uncle Rob.

Lets hope little Holly has another good night tonight and that Meeks' milk comes in tomorrow so that Holly doesn't need any more bottle feeding.

Just a reminder, I'll keep updating the slideshow here with more photos than I can show on the blog here.

Holly's first bath and other photos

Before we get to the cute bath photos it's worth making a few comments about how things are going. Meeks is doing really well, so much better than previous births. She has had almost no nausea and no vomiting which is great. When Mitch was born she was sick for the first 24 hours and couldn't sit up without vomiting, so that has been a huge blessing. With the twins she had very significant bleeding to the extent she needed a blood transfusion and was pretty out of it for the first couple of days.This time she has had nothing like that and as a result was well enough to have her various tubes removed this morning and was able to have a shower and walk around a bit. The ability to have a shower may not sound like much, but it is a huge thing for her.

Holly is also doing really well, she has been released from special care and is back in the room with Meeks. Today she cried quite a bit and didn't feed terribly well. Hopefully that will improve when Meeks' milk comes in which should happen in the next day or so. We had to do our first nappy change today and anyone who knows about those first few nappy changes, it's not pleasant (Google "meconium" if you're wondering why). We have also decided changing nappies on boys is easier than on girls.

Lucas and Sam came in to see Meeks and Holly today as Mitch had preschool. They are very excited about having a little sister and are constantly wanting to touch her and kiss her and poke her and jump all over Daddy and Holly while she is having a cuddle. After a while though, they do get a bit bored. Fortunately, what to the average person is a very ordinary view:

Is a very interesting view for a couple of 2 and a half year olds who like cars.

After lots of cuddles and kisses and some playing with cars and colouring in and a visit by Marion, Nanna and Poppy it was time to go home.

After a hour or so of average sleep and a cuddle

and a visit by our friend Kate we decided to give Holly her first bath. She wasn't thrilled by it and cried most of the time, but was very cute and now she is also cute and clean.

She is very cute! I think she looks a lot like Mitch did, compare this shot:

with the shots of Mitch here and Lucas and Sam here.

More photos of Holly Kate's first day

For those who are using iPads and other Apple devices, and therefore unable to view Flash things you can go to this link or if that doesn't work try this.

Or barring that you can look at this smaller selection:

Welcome to the world Holly Kate Clark

A 7:28am this morning Holly Kate Clark was born into the world. She was 4.25kg and 58cm long (much taller than the boys!) and had a head circumference of 35.5 cm. She had low blood sugar like the boys, so will need to spend the night in special care, but is feeding much better than any of them did. Meeks is doing much better than she did after Mitch or Lucas and Sam.

Anyway, here are a few photos :)

Pregnant bellies

Well here we are at almost 37 weeks and I took a photo of Meeks' pregnant belly to compare it with the belly from the twins. Meeks feels big, but there is no comparison. The twins belly is much larger!

Meeks is beautiful in both, even if she doesn't feel like it :)