Going home?

There is not a certain weight that Ella needs to reach to go home. She is 4 pounds now. Still very tiny but such a huge difference from 2 pounds.

She is on a quarter liter of oxygen. They will try her off of oxygen at some point but they are not in a rush. It is unlikely she will come home on oxygen but babies can go home on oxygen. She has had apnea spells mainly while eating, but the nurse said that she will outgrow that soon.

Feeding: Currently Ella needs to take her bottle every 3 hours. Her feeding is just over an ounce. Whatever she does not take goes down her NG tube. Once she has a couple days of this type of feeding they will re-try her on the next phase. The next phase, feeding every 3 hours but she will bottle feed what she wants. The trick with this type of feeding is that she needs to meet a certain daily intake. Then, the next phase is on demand feeding. On demand feeding is allowing her to eat when she wants. She should eat every 2-4 hours and again to pass needs to take in a certain daily volume.

Once Ella is feeding a few days, gaining weight and breathing ... she can come home.

She has a series of tests prior to discharge which are done when they know she will go home in a matter of days. These include a car seat test. She will sit in her car seat for 90 minutes with monitors. This is to ensure she can tolerate sitting in a car set without breathing problems. She will have a hearing test. Congenital heart test where they put an oxygen saturation monitor on a leg and a hand to make sure she has good oxygenation on both sides.

And, we have an infant CPR dummy and tape. They advise that all caregivers watch it and practice.

We have also been told on a few occasions that we should keep her out of public places since she was premature and technically should not be here yet, we need to be extra cautious. Specific examples were malls and church. It makes it easier to anticipate following that recommendation since it is so freezing outside.