Skin to skin

Skin to skin time is sort of like medicine for premature babies, so Euan's been doing lots of it with Brair . it's basically- sitting about with his top off playing his game boy- it's not an arduous task - altough he does have to watch because Briar (who I've decided is half child half Hoover) left unsupervised will wriggle down and attempt to latch onto his nipples.

grandma and grampa Tracey arrived to visit us with uncle Neil, Aunty sinead and Jacob in tow. We decided it was too many people for our little box of a room so briar got a trip out of the room to the living room at the end of the ward, whilst I expressed and took the milk down to willow. Willow has had her paralytic medicine turned off today - and I was worried other family would see her move before me, but it turned out it takes a long time to work out of her system. I took briar back whilst Euan took everyone down to see willow - I thought I'd get a nap but briar went on a massive cluster feed, but we'll forgive her that because last night she went 6 hours between feeds overnight, so we're happy to encourage calorie loading during the day.

We skyped ivy tonight, was amazing to see her and she's clearly having fun - but we could tell she was missing us. When pops tried to take the phone from her ( we rang before we skyped) to put it on speaker she paniced he was taking us away and screamed mummy daddy. Skype cheered her up though, she showed us a picture shed painted and we played 'show me your nose/ chin/ ears etc' - she's starting to play it back with us saying 'mummy chin! Daddy cheek!' Thank goodness for Skype.

When we arrived to say goodnight to willow, her nurse was cleaning her face. I asked if I could help - at first she thought I meant 'do you need a hand' and said no and then she realised what I meant was 'pretty please can I do this too' and let me change her nappy. I totally froze going to change her and forgot how to change a nappy - but the nurse talked me through it. Then we had a really positive chat with the registrar down in neonatal in the evening - I had a list of questions I only feel I can ask now we're feeling confident we're going to get her home eventually ( weren't sure of that before her op went so well) - like how much expressed breast milk she'll get when they start putting it down her tube and when I might get to hold her (maybe the day after tomorrow!). He said her recovery time was probably going to be weeks not months - we came away beaming.