Can't Deny I've Got This Heartburn

Uncle Berry, GrandDaddy and Grammy admiring the newest grandbaby for the first time.

I called this morning and found out her nurse is Tina. She is not our primary, but worked a lot with a 15 month old girl in the bed beside Amelia (the little girl finally went home several weeks ago). Tina is lively, bantery and very attentive. So I feel very comfortable she is caring for our baby this morning. The last couple of nurses we have had I have not liked because they are too low key, don't like to engage me and Todd in any conversation and tend to be a bit on the lazy or distracted side. Amelia has been having some hard days lately and the lack of urgency on the part of some of these nurses has been maddening. Anyway...I called Tina this morning and she said:

She changed a 92 cc diaper!!!! with poos and wees in it and while she was changing it, Amelia was making more poo. So between that and the diapers she has had over the last 2 days with lasix, I feel like she is probably turning a corner with her extra fluid build up. She was down to 2400 grams on her wieght last night...she is back down to 5 lbs. 4 oz which is a more appropriate "real" weight for her. By the way, Amelia is up to 51 mL (1.72 ounces) per feed, 8 times a day.

Tina also said that her oxygen is down to 65% and she feels confident that she should be able to wean her more today. Amelia hasn't seen 60s for her oxygen in days. This is obviously a great sign. Maybe in a few days we can wean down to CPAP 7. How great would that be? There I go, getting ahead of myself. Sorry.

Tina suctioned a super ton of gook out of her nose this morning. That has got to make breathing easier. The RT traded out her CPAP with the prongs for the one with the little cup over her nose. CPAP is not a great contraption. All the different types have different trade offs. The one with the cup is nice because she doesn't have prongs going up her nostrils irritating them all the time. But it puts pressure on the bridge of her nose and often doesn't force as much pressure into the lungs as the ones with prongs do. The plan I think is to switch them out routinely so that she doesn't get too irritated by any one thing for an extended period.

Last night Todd and I got to see our NICU parent friends, parents of Baby Nathan...at the hospital. He has reflux! They gave him a braium dye test where he swallowed this stuff and they could see on a screen what was happening with the fluid. Once it touched his stomach it came back up into his esophogus.

As you all are aware, Amelia tends to desat when she eats and they also suspect reflux. But with her they did a Ph probe in which they have to look at the numbers captured on an electronic device and then match them up with a log of activities that the nurse kept. The idea is to see what activities are spurring elevations in the numbers. The barium dye thing seems so much simpler and they get their answer right away. We are still waiting on the results of her test that was given over a week ago.

Another thing...they treat infections with antibiotics a good two days before they get confirmation of an infection. Why not treat relux the same way? It seems fairly obvious to me that she has it. Are the treatments (previcid) really that bad that they shouldn't give it to her without confirmation? This desatting while eating thing and the suspected reflux has been going on for about a month. Enough already. Give the kid a tums!