Taking matters into my own hands

Gesina maintained her weight yesterday so she did not come home today. After spending some time at the hospital today I left very frustrated and at my wits end. I spent the drive home trying to figure out why I was so upset. By the time I got home, I figured out my frustration and have a plan. I'm going to take matters into my own hands and mom up... again.

Every day, Gesina has been assigned her daytime nurse who is the only one who has been successful in getting her to eat larger amounts. But every night, they've been assigning Gesina to a new nurse she has never had before; yup a different nurse EVERY NIGHT. This means that my very particular, finicky eater is not eating nearly as much at night and all the daytime gains are lost. I've also figured out that they are feeding her every four hours... just like when she was on a schedule. They are not feeding her when she wants to be fed, just every four hours like they feed all the other babies. None of this is the "fault" of the nurses as they are just doing their jobs as assigned. And the nurse assignments make sense as Gesina is not a high-risk case right now so her earlier, more consistent nurses are assigned the more interesting cases. The "floater" nurses she is getting assigned to are more likely to be experienced in premature babies and not full term, nearly 7 week old babies. And finally, today when I wanted to feed Gesina the nurse was busy with other babies/moms so it took about 15 minutes before I could begin nursing. By that time, Gesina went from showing signs of being hungry to temper-tantrum hungry. She ended up not nursing and only taking 20 ml from her bottle (she should be taking at least 80 ml). Taken together, the doctors want to keep Gesina in the NICU until her feeding issues are resolved. The problem is that the NICU nurses/system is not designed to help a baby with her feeding issues. At the end of the day, we are not doing anything to address her feeding issues besides waiting for her to magically grow out of it. In fact, a different nurse every night is probably setting her back.

So I've come up with a plan. The person that needs to learn how to get Gesina to eat and can be consistently there for her is me. If Gesina doesn't magically gain weight tomorrow and come home, I'm going to do everything I can to stay the night at the hospital. I will sit by her bedside and watch for all the cues you read about in the baby books. I will feed her for every meal I can, when she shows signs of hunger and not every 4 hours, and I'll do what I can to figure it out. I will eat and sleep as best I can when she sleeps. So my plan is to take matters into my own hands. I'll let you know how it goes!