Since the Captain was moved to the Level II NICU, I’ve pretty much been here as much as possible. I’ve gone home a few nights. When my sister visited, the night before I went into work one last time, and the night I was diagnosed with Mastitis.

For those who don’t know what Mastitis is, it’s an infection in your breast tissue that causes sudden flu like symptoms and hard red lump in your breast from the stagnant milk. The treatment is antibiotics, heat and to drain the milk from that breast every 2 hours, which makes sleeping fun. On top of the that, as some kind of cruel joke, the antibiodics proscribed are to be taken on a empty stomach. Which is one more thing to schedule around.

But in general I am developing a routine here. I sleep in the Captain’s room which has a very uncomfortable couch that turns into an even more uncomfortable twin size bed. As a newborn he needs to eat every 2-3 hours. But if he’s doing an oral feed or a tube feed all depends on if he’s cueing or not. Preemies have such low energy that they sleep a lot, more than a typical newborn, so even though they need food they may not show it because they are conserving energy to grow. Which means being on demand when he does show interest and is cueing for oral feedings.

Now that we’ve introduced bottles of breastmilk that the Admiral can give him I am able to get a little more rest and go home a bit more. I will write more on bottles later, but for now know it’s good for the Captain to get these bottles of my breastmilk between breastfeeding sessions because we can see exactly how much he’s getting, and there is a caloric fortifier and a multivitamin being added.

The last few nights we have switched off. I stay, the Admiral goes home, I go home the Admiral stays. This seems to be working well. We each get a break, each get to sleep in our own bed, shower in our shower, feed the cats, do a little laundry, housework etc. I am still not able to sleep all way through the night even at home, because I still have to wake up to pump so we have something for those bottles. But sleeping in my own bed makes getting up so much easier.

All in all things have settled into a strange domestic routine with the NICU as our background. Sleep, breastfeed, pump, eat, bathroom, wash pump supplies, repeat. We still don’t have an exact date we will be going home, and to be honest we probably won’t until about a few hours before discharge. It’s pretty much all up to the Captain. Does he continue to do well with oral feeds? Does he continue to gain weight? Time will tell. Until then all we can do is remain patient (haha) and calm.