Tessa continued to improve over the Monday and Tuesday since my last post.  She gained 40g and was taking more and more milk.  Her heart murmur continued to weaken, giving us more hope that she was on top of the PDA.  The only negative piece of news we got over the two days was that her haemoglobin count is low.  This is actually pretty common in prem babies because they lack the necessary hormone to generate their own red blood cells.  She is not quite anemic (which would necessitate a blood transfusion, which we want to avoid because of the associated risks) though we’ll have to continue monitoring her.  Nonetheless it was not considered a blocker to discharge, which was relieving.

Over Tuesday and Wednesday, both girls were put through a series of scans to check on possible risks associated with their prematurity.  These included eye tests (to further check for ROP) and hearing tests.  Georgia also had a cranial ultrasound to check on the state of the intraventricular hemorrhage, or bleeding on the brain.  The great news was that every single test came back clear for both babies.  Tessa will have her cranial ultrasound next week but we have no reason to think her result will be any different to Georgia’s.

So with green lights all the way, Wednesday truly was the end of the beginning.  We said our farewells to the staff at Raffles and packed Tessa (and Georgia, who had accompanied us on the trip to complete her tests) into a taxi to head home.  How did we feel?  Exhausted, exhilarated, overwhelmed, apprehensive and a little sad to have said goodbye to the hospital staff to whom we have became close over the seven weeks.

What’s in front of us?  A lot of sleepless nights!  The girls are bottle-fed breast milk on a strict three-hourly regimen.  It would be impossible for either Stace or me to do it alone (one baby screaming while you’re trying to feed the other …) so we do all the feeds together, at 9pm / midnight / 3am and 6am.  Because of the girls’ age, the doctor expects we’ll be on a three hour schedule until Christmas, when we can stretch it to three and a half hours … we’re sure you’re envious.

Next week we take Tess back for her check up and cranial ultrasound (Georgia did so well in her check up that she’s been given three weeks until her next).  She’ll also have an echocardiogram to check if her PDA has well and truly closed.

We wonder how we’ll ever show our appreciation to the staff at Raffles Hospital.  They have been everything we could have wanted them to be.  Our neonatologist, Dr Tan Mein Chuen, has anticipated everything along the way and his dedication has been inspiring.  Over the seven weeks Tessa was in the NICU, he visited her every single day – with the exception of three days early on, when he had to go to a medical conference.  The nurses were reassuring, empathetic and wonderfully personable.  We got to know them all very well over long hours in the NICU – when we left the hospital there were a few tears!  We’re looking forward to staying in touch to share the girls’ progress with them over the coming years.

Finally thanks to everyone for the emails and phone calls ... it became an emotional release to sit and write these posts and I never thought so many people would read them.  The positive feedback gave a little more motivation to continue posting and I hope that one day the girls will be able to read them and understand more about their beginnings.  I also hope that maybe one day they may be useful to another couple with a similar experience - a story with a happy ending can make a big difference on some days.