Oh, what a difference a day makes.
Wow, a lot has happened today.
We decided to take it a little slower getting down here and we decided not to call ahead of time. No reason to panic ourselves. After Dr. Arrington's advice last night it seemed like the best idea.
When we first got to the hospital Ellie was wide awake. Eyes open and squirming.
I have lots of her with her eyes open.
what's all this stuff in me?!?!
Her billiruben count was up again today. No billi blanket, but they did give her stadium lights. You can see the little mask hanging off her in the pics above. They call them sunglasses, I call them face hiders.
We soon were able to page the cardiologist, Dr. Ellington. She seemed MUCH more calm than yesterday. I was very annoyed with her because 2 days ago she said "we're taking it slow, one day at a time", then yesterday she said "AHHHH MUST DO SURGERY NOW!!AAAHHHH" (not a direct quote) and today she's back to take it slow.
I think we closed a door today. It turns out that she is not a good candidate for the Norwood procedure because her left ventricle is SO large it would get in the way. So in the cardiologist conference they had this morning they decided to take her off the prostoglandins and let her PDA close. Exactly what Dr. Arrington said last night. By going down this path we are trusting her heart to work normally. If it does not we are in very scary territory.
This put us in a much better mood however. We have faith that she wont give up. Neither will we.
They changed her bed today to, and you know what THAT means!!! We get to hold the baby!!! YEA! We got to hold her for about an half hour. Teri about 20 min, me about 10. (I wanted it that way.)
Her hematocrit (red blood cell count) was down. So they had to give her blood. You can see the IV in her head. Yea, I know.. her head?
Wow, I need to shave.
The head neonatologist on the floor is Dr. Chan. He's a very nice good natured guy. The funny thing about him is that most of the time he goes around with one eye winking. So all the nurses bust a gut when i said that Ellie "had a Dr. Chan thing going on"
Over the next 24 hours they should start to see changes in her blood pressure and responses to her PDA closing. We may have seen a few of those changes as we put her back in her bed. Her blood pressure was way up. This is a good thing, it means they can wean her from the dopamine. But after another hour it had calmed back down again, even gone very low. The nurse was very quick to calm me down about it, but she admitted to another nurse a bit later that it had her worried. They decided however that it is probably just due to the changes.
Also, another cute event. Her umbilical cord fell off. Kinda gross rather than cute, but we like all good milestones like that. hehe. And of course, I took a picture.
We decided to take it a little slower getting down here and we decided not to call ahead of time. No reason to panic ourselves. After Dr. Arrington's advice last night it seemed like the best idea.
When we first got to the hospital Ellie was wide awake. Eyes open and squirming.
I have lots of her with her eyes open.
what's all this stuff in me?!?!
Her billiruben count was up again today. No billi blanket, but they did give her stadium lights. You can see the little mask hanging off her in the pics above. They call them sunglasses, I call them face hiders.
We soon were able to page the cardiologist, Dr. Ellington. She seemed MUCH more calm than yesterday. I was very annoyed with her because 2 days ago she said "we're taking it slow, one day at a time", then yesterday she said "AHHHH MUST DO SURGERY NOW!!AAAHHHH" (not a direct quote) and today she's back to take it slow.
I think we closed a door today. It turns out that she is not a good candidate for the Norwood procedure because her left ventricle is SO large it would get in the way. So in the cardiologist conference they had this morning they decided to take her off the prostoglandins and let her PDA close. Exactly what Dr. Arrington said last night. By going down this path we are trusting her heart to work normally. If it does not we are in very scary territory.
This put us in a much better mood however. We have faith that she wont give up. Neither will we.
They changed her bed today to, and you know what THAT means!!! We get to hold the baby!!! YEA! We got to hold her for about an half hour. Teri about 20 min, me about 10. (I wanted it that way.)
Her hematocrit (red blood cell count) was down. So they had to give her blood. You can see the IV in her head. Yea, I know.. her head?
Wow, I need to shave.
The head neonatologist on the floor is Dr. Chan. He's a very nice good natured guy. The funny thing about him is that most of the time he goes around with one eye winking. So all the nurses bust a gut when i said that Ellie "had a Dr. Chan thing going on"
Over the next 24 hours they should start to see changes in her blood pressure and responses to her PDA closing. We may have seen a few of those changes as we put her back in her bed. Her blood pressure was way up. This is a good thing, it means they can wean her from the dopamine. But after another hour it had calmed back down again, even gone very low. The nurse was very quick to calm me down about it, but she admitted to another nurse a bit later that it had her worried. They decided however that it is probably just due to the changes.
Also, another cute event. Her umbilical cord fell off. Kinda gross rather than cute, but we like all good milestones like that. hehe. And of course, I took a picture.
posted by paqogomez | 6:20 PM
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