5 weeks old - 2lb 14 and daddy's first nappy!

Sophie is now 5 weeks old - or 32 weeks if that's how you prefer to look at it, and has reached 2lb 14 oz which is over a pound more than when she was born!




She was slightly anaemic on Tuesday and had to have a blood transfusion, but the nurse assured me that almost all the premature babies have to have one sooner or later. They were just setting it up when I arrived to see her that afternoon, and had to get a doctor to come to put the cannula in her tiny hand. I couldn't watch that being done and waited in the corner till it was done, only to find out it hadn't worked and they had to re-do it in the other hand :( Then that didn't work either so they finally got it to work in her foot. It was too horrible knowing that all those nasty things had been done to our tiny little baby!

A fat-cheeked Sophie getting her blood transfusion

The blood transfusion did at least do its job, and Sophie was much better on Wednesday and looking a lot less peaky again.

Sophie received some really cute tiny little pink bootees as a present, and Alan took them in because they are small enough to fit her just now. They ended up on her hands though, as they were the only thing that the nurse could find that would stop her pulling her tubes out! Sophie looked as if she was feeling very silly with those on her hands :) She managed to wriggle out of them a few times....

Sophie with her bootee on her hand...

I have been getting much better at the nappy changes and can now do them completely unsupervised and fairly quickly, despite the fact that Sophie really doesn't make it easy with all the wriggling and kicking that she does! She likes to fix me with her beady eye while I'm changing her nappy, which is so cute.

Watching mummy...

She has been getting eye drops since the end of the week, to treat a wee eye infection that has possibly been caused by the CPAP - again something that is common in the babies.

Daddy got to pick Sophie up inside the incubator on Thursday and we were also shown how to pick her up and turn her over, by putting one hand under her head and the other under her bottom and just turning her with the hand that's under her bottom - looks very slick when the nurse does it but it'll be a while till we are brave enough to try it ourselves!

Waiting for a nappy change

Daddy also did his first nappy change on Saturday, which I missed :( Somehow, he managed to get one that wasn't too minging! Paul, the nurse who was looking after Sophie earlier in the week had suggested that I should keep a chart of how many nappies we each do in the hospital, and their content, and make sure that Alan catches up when we get home...I think that's not a bad idea!

Sophie's new shoes :)