Nurse D gave Lexi her first bow! (You don't wanna know how it's attached.) Thursday was pretty uneventful. Dr. M made a referral for speech therapy (just to clarify, they aren't teaching Lexi to talk--speech also helps with feeding and swallowing). They did the urine culture and the liver ultrasound, both of which came back negative. This makes the doctor assume that the increased direct biliruben count is due to prolonged use of the TPN and not eating for so long. So Lexi will be started on a medication called Ursodiol to help her jaundice. It usually takes a couple of weeks to work but by next week they should at least see that the numbers are going down (we want it below 2).
Today they started bolus feedings. Instead of Alexis receiving breast milk continuously through a tube, they will have the pump on for 2 hours and off for one. This will help her to feel hunger for the first time which should also improve her feedings by mouth. Every other 2-hour feeding, she will receive a bottle and can take up to 50mL. She took 20 today which the nurses seemed very pleased with. And it all stayed down. I'm just so shocked that she so rarely spits up! After Nicholas spitting up EVERYTHING for the first 8 months of his life and then Blake doing the same for his first 11 months, I expect Alexis, especially with her duodenal atresia, to have everything come up. But so far I've only seen her spit up twice and very small amounts. Maybe there's hope that when she comes home, the house won't start smelling like spoiled milk from large amounts of spit up!
Today I met with an OT who had lots of suggestions such as how to hold her, equipment to not use (no Johnny Jumpers!), doing tummy time, and first steps info. Speech Therapy did an eval and I was quite surprised to see that the ST was someone I had worked with 10 years ago at Manor Care! Health care is a very small world! ST watched my feed Alexis and asked a lot of questions about her feeding issues (energy), my breast feeding plans (hate it but will stick with it for now), etc.
I got quite excited to take Lexi off of the nasal canula today. One less tube! Unfortunately her O2 dropped and they put it back on an hour later.
Brent and Elizabeth came to town today for tomorrow's Mini Marathon and got to come to the hospital and visit with Alexis for the first time. She was held by both of them and slept through the whole thing. I think she's quite comfortable with them...
I find it very interesting that they have limited visitors at 3 Clarian Hospitals due to swine flu. I believe that only parents and significant others can visit at those hospital and after hearing this, won't be surprised if St. Vincent will do the same. I think we'll take the boys to the hospital tomorrow for a visit in case they start limiting the visitation soon.
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