Thursday, August 30, 2012

Day 75

When I went in to see Anya they had already extubated her, and she did not look very good. She was fighting the c-pap as she did before, and she had needed some versed to calm down. It only worked for fifteen minutes or so and she started fighting again. Her nurse and I got her in a swaddle wrap I had brought from home to contain her, and I spent the next three hours patting her rear trying to calm her. The minute I stopped she would get wound up again.

Her o2 sats looked good but she was very pale. It was a really hard couple of hours, I was filled with doubt. The issue is she could either be irritated because of the c-pap and she was using up energy fighting it, or she wasn’t getting oxygen as she should and so was irritated. It can be really difficult to know which it is. Her nurse covered me so I could go eat and when I came back she looked a lot better: she had been sucking on her nurse’s finger, and had been very content. I let her suck on my finger and after a while she looked a lot pinker, more normal. Then she became the calm baby I know and looked around, tried talking a little, and had a good time staring at her toys.

Because she was acting so normal I feel a lot better. If she was worn out from breathing on her own she would not have the energy to do that. After Adam got off work she got a little irritable at times but we left her sleeping at change of shift. I hope she sleeps some tonight; she needed almost complete one on one care all day.

I am cautiously optimistic. We have been burned before so I do not want to set my hopes on anything. The hardest part of this stage is seeing her so uncomfortable and knowing she is just so close to getting where she needs to be. Her feeds continued today; since she is tolerating them well she was taken off her lipids, part of her IV nutrition. Soon enough she will get off the other part, the electrolytes. Then she will get off her pain med, and then we will be IV free other than the push meds that are given quickly. Another one of the monitoring devices was taken off today. Little by little we are getting our girl, but until she can get her lungs working better home seems very far away.

Praying for Anya to keep her energy up!

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