More Good News!

She has started taking breast milk through her feeding tube. 4 cc's every 3 hours for the last 24 hours, this morning it was 8 cc's for 3 feedings, then up to 12 after that! We're hoping she'll be up to full feeds in 3-5 days so they can stop the IV nutrition. They didn't put a PICC line in after surgery because they had trouble finding veins.

All that was for the nurses in my family who will know what it means! For the rest of us, 80 cc is a little over 2.5 fluid ounces or 5 tablespoons of liquid. Basically, her intestines look like they are working fine and healing well.

Mental Health Day

Yesterday I told our nurse that I didn't want any bad news, and if they had any for me it would have to wait until today. Olivia has been improving radically in the past week since the surgery. The surgeries were for the feeding tube in her belly and to reconnect her intestines and should not really make a difference to her ability to move. Rafe said he felt like her body was like, "HEY! That hurt! Is that attached to me? Wait... I have legs.... I have arms.... I have a body! lets see if I can move them around!"

So it has been wonderful to see her making movements similar to what a newborn would make. She can curl her hands, bring her arms to midline, move her head slightly on occasion and flex her legs and bring them in. She is still floppy, but her muscle tone has improved significantly. They told us that after her surgery she would be intubated and back on a ventilator (she had been weaned to a nasal cannula). However, less than a few hours after her surgery, she was fighting the intubation so they took it out and put her back on the cannula (this was a week ago). Sunday she was breathing room air and has been ever since. Her O2 levels range from 86 to 100, but have mostly been high 90s. She is breathing ON HER OWN!

Things were going so well that I really did not want to hear anything negative yesterday. I just wanted to savor the moment and watch her and snuggle with her.

We still have a long ways to go, but she looks great. I will post more pictures and updates tonight. Off to the hospital.

Floppy Baby

Olivia was born at 10:28 pm. An hour into it, we were told it was a good time to pray after my husband left the room to ask about her. Three and a half hours later, the first people we saw were the two people from the emergency flight crew from MUSC. They wheeled her incubator in the room next to the bed so that I could reach up and touch her leg through the round window before they took off with her. They also gave me a polaroid picture of her - when I can find a way to scan it, I'll post it. She was yellow, bruised, and flat. They had worked on her for that entire time trying to stabilize her and there were some oxygen deprivation issues.

You can see how floppy her tone is in this picture. Any semblance of positioning was done by the nurses in all of the pictures I've posted so far. They would move her in different positions, taking into account the tubes, wires and lines coming out of her but also trying to keep her muscles stretched. In her right arm is a PICC line for direct nutrition.

It was excruciating to watch her lay so still. At the time, the doctors were telling us that it could be from the tremendous amount of trauma she suffered after birth and the medications for pain and seizures. It was a time to just wait and watch.

Bilirubin

Three days into this, Olivia's bilirubin levels were very high and she was
put under lights with a little blindfold on.

At the bottom right of the picture is a breast pad - compare that to the size of her head for an idea of how little she was.

She has had three chest tubes in her side all together (the slender white tube at the bottom)
to help her lungs.

Sweet big sister

I can only imagine what is going through Amelia's mind by the look on her face. One thing that sort of surprized me was how attached she was to Olivia already and what a sad or concerned look was on her face for some of these pictures. She's such a sweet and empathetic child.

August 25

Looking through the incubator - it's covered with a cloth so she was
shielded from the lights and just lifted up when she had visitors.

Double click this picture and compare the size of Rafe's finger with the size of her leg.