My daughter was born at 34 weeks to the day. She spent the first month of her life in the NICU at the hospital she was born in. Life of having a baby in the NICU is rough and emotional. Its one of the hardest things I have gone through in my life. There are several "must haves" for yourself and baby during their stay in the NICU. These are the products that made life easier for us during Claire's stay!
Boppy With a child in the NICU you spend long hours there just holding them (when your allowed to) and once your allowed to breastfeed/bottle feed having a boppy comes in very handy. Plus once you get your precious little one home its becomes one of the most useful baby products you can own.
Receiving Blankets and lots of them! Not only do babies in the NICU spend their days swaddled, the NICU (at least Claire's) made up her isolette and eventually her open crib in her own receiving blankets to make it feel a little more like home for her and us.
Premie Clothes The NICU does everything they can to make sure your baby's stay feels as close to normal as possible. So I recommend bringing in plenty of premie clothes/pajamas. Everyday they would dress Claire just as you would at home. Though make sure whatever you buy has snaps, this is important because of the lead wires and IV's will need to be threaded through and that is difficult with pajamas that has a zipper instead of snaps. Also bring in several hats, maintaining temperature on their own is a big milestone in the NICU.
Bath Soap The NICU encourages parents to be as involved as possible in their baby's care. This includes giving baby a bath. They will have bath time soap, but we found it nice to bring in Claire's own bath time soap and lotion for after. We use Johnson and Johnson's bedtime bath products. Don't worry about a towel our NICU used warm blankets and a warming lamp during Claire's bath time.
Breast Pump If you decide to breastfeed you will need to start pumping immediately if you baby is premature. You will have to trigger your body to start producing due to the premature delivery. Its also very important and helpful to bring any pumped milk you can to the NICU to feed to your baby once they decide baby can start being fed by bottle.The NICU will supply you with pump containers to pump into and bring in (everything has to be measured in the NICU). Our NICU had two pumps rooms with pumps that I used during the day while I was at the NICU, but the Medela Symphony is the hospital grade pump I use at home. Even now that Claire is almost 8 months old I still have to pump as Claire has struggled to gain weight and is still on fortified breast milk (26kcal) and formula.
Till next time!
5 comments:
Well i just kind of wanted to ask does breastfeeding make your boobs sag or just pregnancy .
im due Jan 5, 2013 and its my 1st so need mommy advise .
i hear that you loose weight when breast feeding is that also true?
sorry for all the questions.
Pregnancy does stir up a lot of questions, doesn't it?! Mine sagged more while I was pregnant since they got bigger, but once I had Claire and started breast feeding they haven't seemed to sag to much. In the beginning they looked like I had implants once my milk started coming in and they got engorged. I initially lost weight pretty quickly after having my daughter but the last 10lbs are lingering between having to eat so many calories to keep up my milk supply and partially because of my c-section. Any questions you have ask away.
Congrats by the way!
Thank you so much. and yes it does make me think about alot of stuff i didn't before lol
i guess mine are at the point where they look like i got implants .that's great about the weight loss . im sure you'll loose those 10 in no time .
i love your little baby girl name . that is one of the names my hubs really like :)
do you rent your breast pump or did you buy it ?
also what would you recommend for a must on the registry list ? what have you notice you needed and what was unnecessary. gosh! im so annoying lol
Thanks we actually didn't decide on her name until right before I went into the operating room for my c-section. We love it, there aren't very many Claire's out there.
My pump is rented from a lactation company since I have to have a hospital grade to keep up with the pump schedule I have to keep due to low supply and having to pump regardless to be able to fortify Claire's milk to 26 kcal.
For your registry question I will make a blog post for you.
Awe thanks :)
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