Yesterday afternoon they moved her back down to the NICU. She was the only baby left in her hallway in the PICU, making things a little tricky for the nurses up there, and since she's doing so well the doctors decided to move her.
John and I went on a date with our friends Brian and Alisha last night to Serendipity 3 down on the Strip. They're famous for their frozen hot-chocolate. I'm not a fan. But they have deeeeeelicious sundaes. Yummy ice cream topped with fudge and marshmallow goo and a mountain of whipped cream and a cherry... I could go back every day if it wasn't such a long walk. Or so dang pricey!!
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| Doesn't it just look SO good?!! |
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| Please ignore that we look exhausted... we just had a baby. ;) |
When I got to the hospital this morning I had to put on a gown, face mask, and gloves before I could see Ruthe. The test they run for staph takes about 48-hours to come back, so until then we'll have to suit-up! She was wide awake for a little bit, because the nurse had just changed her diaper and checked her out, but she gets pretty sleepy from all that fussing. I held her for about an hour, and then the cardiologists came around to check her out. Everything's still looking and sounding great! Her incision did open up a little bit, and it's leaking some fluid, but not a lot, and no one's been too concerned about it.
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| Three weeks!! I may need to invent a time-machine. |
The nurse and I tried to bottle-feed her a little bit more today. She didn't do so well. It's pretty tricky to figure out the whole process... although Ruthe does have the chicken-head motion down! The problems come when the milk's in her mouth and she doesn't know what to do with it. She'll just kind of stare at you, like she's saying, "Um, excuse me, but there seems to be something leaking into my mouth and I'm not sure what's supposed to happen now. You seem to be a little too excited about all of this, so could you please just give back my regular, non-leaky bink?"
When John and I went back tonight she was still doing really well. They took out her PICC line, so she only has two things going into her! Just her feeding tube, and one last IV running into her chest. Their plan is to get that taken out tomorrow, but the surgeon has to give the go-ahead. Hopefully they'll take that out and be done with it, but the nurse said they may have to put in a new peripheral IV [just in her hand/wrist] if she needs any more medications or fluids.
The neonatologist [doctor in the NICU] had the nurses start compressing Ruthe's feeds. Before she was just getting a continuous stream, but now she gets 60cc's over about two hours, and then nothing for an hour, and then 60 more cc's... you get it. They'll keep decreasing the length of her feeds and increasing the time between them, so she gets used to having a full and then empty belly. Then it should be a little easier to convince her to take a bottle or nurse. In the meantime, we'll meet with a speech therapist who can help evaluate Ruthe's needs, and tell us if/how her cleft palate will factor in to her learning to eat.
Hopefully Ruthe will be able to keep her temperature steady for the rest of the night. She was a little cold when we took her temp at 11, but I just called and the nurse said she was coming back up. If she can keep herself warm enough on her own, then as soon as they get that line out of her chest they can move her into a regular crib. That's one step closer to coming home!!
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