Catch 22... rock and a hard place...

Amelia was up some more on her weight... and her vent settings. She had another bad blood gas this morning, and I don't think the doctor's really know what's best. She is sort of in a catch 22 position with everything right now.

She's getting lasix to help dry her lungs, albuterol and mucamist to dislodge the crud. They want her off the vent ASAP, but aren't sure of the best course. The longer she stays on the vent, the worse her lungs get, but they can't get her off the vent as her lungs get worse. They don't really want to give her steroids, not only because of possible long terms affects, but also because of the immediate effect it has - which is that it throws her electrolytes off balance - which then would throw her renal output off, which would then likely cause fluid retention, which is what they are tyring NOT to do. They can't much of anything either, if she needs any kind of ROP treatment, so they are trying to wait for that to resolve itself or need treatment. The restuls of her eye exam yesterday were basically the same as they were last week, which is not a bad thing. It hadn't gotten better, but it hadn't gotten worse. The opthalmalogist believes Amelia is getting to the age where the ROP will in fact resolve itself, and nothing will be needed to be done. That's a guess, but the doctor has been around a long time, and Xina and I feel good about that prognosis.

However, the other doctor's are still tied as what to do that would not increase the ROP at this stage.

I don't know much else; simply because I don't think the doctor's know much else. It's certainly an odd thing to have such a huge regression in her, but not completely uncommon I suppose. We have an attending for the next 2 weeks we have never had before, and we have not had a chance to talk to him yet and get his feelings on the matter.

On the good side, she didn't not have a BM Tuesday or Wednesday, and the nurses were a little concerned about that. But as we left for the shift change Wed. I thought she smelled a little... and when I got back, I still smelled it... (and if I can smell it with my sinus situation, I don't know why no one else could.) Our nurse was assessing the other baby she had that night, so I went ahead and checked her diaper myself. She had a mess... out her side, up her back... peed through the diaper and outfit and onto the swaddle blanket. I wimped out and decided that I would leave it to her caregiver for the evening to clean her up - since the last time I had that much to deal with, she de-satted heavily. That, and the fact I figured I might as well take advantage of having someone else to around to change her. There's plenty of time for me to change her myself in the future. We had to change out the whole bed and all the blankets. But she seemed to enjoy the attention and dealt with it all. She remained awake for another 20 minutes, but fell asleep pretty hard to the sound of Baby Genius music. For the rest of the night and up until now, I've had "The wheels of the bus go round and round" playing in my head. Is this what I have to deal with for the next 8 years? I've got to get more Beatles on that playlist....