Status quo...

Monday, December 22

The past couple of days have been pretty non-descript... Faith is recovering well from her surgery. She is getting a little better each time we do her cares. Yesterday her little eyes were so sad when she would open them and look at me, like she was thinking, "Why did you let them do this to me again?". Today they look a little sleepy, but not nearly so sad. She hasn't had to have any extra pain meds today at all, and her Fentanyl drip is only at 1. Hopefully they'll be able to start weaning that in the next couple of days, as she really starts to feel better again. It amazes me how babies recover from surgery so quickly, when something similar in an adult would take 6 weeks to recover from. I think when they wean the Fentanyl she'll probably be able to come off of the oxygen very shortly afterwards; she is on very little (50 cc's of low-flow) and her oxygen saturations are hanging out in the 98-100 range.

Her NG tube is gigantic, and is hooked up to suction right now, like it was when she was first born, before she was closed. It had been getting quite a bit out, but it seems like it is slowing down some, and it is definitely less green than it was yesterday, so that is a good thing. I am hopeful that this part will go faster than it did last time, and that they'll be able to put it to gravity in the next couple of days. We are really hoping for a nice poopy Christmas present, too! ;) Once the secretions from the NG tube slow down and are more clear, and she poops, then they'll be able to start feeds again, and hopefully this time they won't have to keep starting and stopping, and they'll be able to just get her intestines working and then increase feeds like normal until she is up to full feeds. Dr. Sandoval said tonight that once she is eating and doing well, she will be able to go home when she gets to full feeds and is gaining weight like she should. Dr. Partrick said the other night that he didn't think she will need the skim milk for too long once she starts feeds, so she might even get to full-fat feeds around the same time she gets to full feeds, and then she will be able to start breastfeeding full-time. But even if it takes longer to get to full-fat, as long as she is doing well on the skim milk we would still be able to go home. I think we are all looking forward to that...

The little container Faith's NG tube empties into... yesterday it was full of very dark green stuff... today it's lighter and a little more clear. It is still getting barium out too!

I forgot to mention the other day that Dr. Partrick actually came in on Saturday JUST to do Faith's surgery (if you click on his name, you can see a picture of him and read about him a little). After the surgery when they brought her back up, one of the neonatology people was talking to him about another case and asking if he was going to do that one, and he said no, that he wasn't on-call that day, he just came in to take care of Faith. I thought that was pretty cool. The whole thing was very sudden, in case you couldn't tell by the way the blog posts were written... Dr. Sandoval came up Friday night to talk about the results of the contrast study, and started it out by saying that she'd be having surgery at 7:30 Saturday morning... he didn't ease into it at all, just got straight to the point. It's weird though, I actually wasn't nearly as nervous for this surgery as I was for her closure, even though it should have been the other way around, since for the closure all they really had to do was push a little bit of bowel in and sew up a hole, and for this one they actually had to cut her open and take her intestines out!

We switched rooms on Saturday too. It was kind of a good thing, because I guess a lot of our regular primary nurses didn't really care for the parents of the neighbor baby. Plus, it gave me something to keep me occupied while Faith was in surgery, since I had to pack up all of our stuff to move it. And now we are at the very end of the hallway, which is much more private, no one comes down here except to see us or the baby across the hall, so we're thinking that less traffic will make it easier to keep the boys occupied, and there isn't really anyone down here for them to bother. And we can see the mountains from the window right outside our room, and the room is a little bigger, too! So, if you are planning to come and visit, make sure you send me a message so I can tell you our new room number. (Dave and I got new phones this weekend too, and I got a new phone number, so if you need to call me and you don't have the new number yet, you should call him to get it... since it will probably be a couple of months until I get it memorized! I had just finally memorized the old one maybe 2 weeks ago...)

The hospital had a really cool thing on Friday called Snowpile. So many people donate gifts for the kids and their families for Christmas, so one of the ways the hospital distributes them is through Snowpile. Basically, they set up a big room in the conference center with all of these toys and things, and then the parents of every child in the hospital get to go "Christmas shop". It was really overwhelming... all of these wonderful volunteers involved with helping, and all of these great gifts people donated... They had the room set up with different tables for different ages, and different price ranges, and then there were a certain number of gifts for each family. For Faith, they had an under $10 table and an over $10 table, so I got to pick two gifts from the under $10 table and one from the over $10 table. Then I also got to choose a hat, blanket, stuffed animal, and book for her. Then, as if that wasn't generous enough, they had another table with gifts for siblings, so I got to choose one gift for each of the boys, and then a stuffed animal for each boy, too! AND, they gave us wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, two reusable cloth gift bags (I'm gonna start making those any time I give a gift in the future, I think, because they are pretty cool!), a Christmas music DVD with computer animations that go along with the music, and a lullaby CD for Faith. There have also been various groups from different places in the community that have been bringing stuffed bears to all of the kids, so Faith has a couple of those, too.

I had Dave bring my sling down this weekend, so once we are able to hold Faith again, and she has her arterial line and the IV in her arm taken out, I am going to start getting her used to being worn. It will be nice, because we can have our close cuddle time, but I will still be able to knit or post updates or read or whatever, and then she will have a chance to get accustomed to being in a carrier, since she will probably be in one quite a bit when we are home.

Maree is our nurse tonight (she's my favorite), and she said we'll get Faith's bed cleaned up tonight and then I can hold her. :) Faith's arterial line will be taken out in the morning, too, and then she'll get back into her crib, and we'll just have the one bed in the room.
I am going to go home Wednesday afternoon so that we can go to our own church for Christmas Eve, and then do Christmas morning with the boys at my parents' house. It should be nice... and it will definitely be different to be home after almost 4 months away! Then we will come down here in the afternoon on Christmas and open Faith's presents. She has quite a few, so between the presents and the tree, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in her room, and she is starting to show some holiday spirit by wearing one of the cute Christmas bibs she got as a gift from one of the soldiers who went to Bahrain with my dad.

This is the pretty Christmas ornament my mom got Faith. It says "May Love be the Angel that watches over you."