Friday, December 28, 2012

7a.m.

After the scare of yesterday evening, Aubrey had a good night.  She didn't have any episodes and held her feedings down with only a little bit of spit up.  After the weight fluke of the night before, she's back in the normal range at 3lb 14oz.

Today is exactly ten weeks from when all of this started.  I can't believe it's been that long, but then it also feels like we've been living at the hospital forever.  The parents and grandmother of the new baby that came in yesterday (a monster baby at 5.5lbs) were trying to leave him while I was in the room waiting to move Aubrey last evening.  They would do what I always do--tell him goodbye, put the quilt down over him, take a step away, then move back to him and peek.  This happened a couple of times and I said to them, "it's so hard to leave them, I know.  We've been here almost 10 weeks and it's just as hard now as it was the first day."  The mom's eyes got big and the grandmother said, "Ten weeks!  Bless your heart!"  In case you aren't from around here, in this case "bless your heart" is Southern for "oh you poor pitiful thing!"  I'm sure the parents were horrified to hear that you could be stuck in the NICU for 10 freaking weeks (don't say "freaking," Aubrey), so hopefully I'll get to see them today to reassure them that not everyone has to bunk down and live there.

-Keli

7p.m.



Well...so much for the no episodes and no spit up.  She had 2 bad episodes, one of which I was unlucky enough to witness.  She was a very blue baby for a scary minute.  She hadn't had any milk in a while--they were going to skip a feeding to let her rest--but some still came out of her nose. The doctor came in to talk to me, and said he was going to go ahead and stop her feedings for the night and let her digestive tract rest.  He said he would check on her again in the morning and probably restart feedings but would move the tube back to her intestine (that is, after they put a new tube in seeing as she pulled that one out a little while later). After that episode, she did fine the rest of the afternoon--most likely because she didn't have anything in her stomach that could come up.  I held her for a while and we talked and then she took a nap.  They had to put a new IV in her arm to get fluids into her since she's not getting any milk.  *sigh*  Go away, reflux!

-Keli