Hello,
Emily had a good weekend. She handled both the bottle and breastfeeding well. However on Saturday night we noticed that she gained about 3 oz overnight! This is not normal. Also her output had went down. Needless to say she had fluid build up on her lungs and this made her oxygen requirements go up. So yesterday they gave her a boast of a diarill. This really helped! She got rid of over 100 grams (or ml) of weight the very next diaper. Tony says this would be the equivalent of him peeing 10 lbs! Now she is doing much better I am told.
Other then that you can see she played dress up for us on Friday night. This clothing is size 0-3 months on her. You can see it is a bit big but she will be there soon. Tonight I am planning on having her play dress up again after her bath. She normally tolerates it well.
By the way, we looked up her heart diagnosis (or what we thought was her diagnosis) and it scared the living daylights out of me. We went to the doctor yesterday and he told us there is still a ton of stuff they can do for her so we shouldn’t worry. Also the cardiologist isn’t calling it what we thought it was, he is calling it pulmonary hypertension and not cor pulmonale which is what we thought it was called. Has anyone had experience with the later? There isn’t much out there for cor pulmonale and what is out there scared me.
She still needs to be treated extremely well though. We have talked to people who talked to the doctor (head of the ICN) who is going to talk to the nursing staff about making sure whoever is in charge of her (nursing wise) has a light load so that she will not be allowed to cry. While I know that every parent doesn’t want to see their child cry, Emily has a medical reason for this. Which I must admit for a parent that doesn’t like to cause trouble if I don’t have to (the nurses in the Antipardom unit when I was pregnant knew to leave me alone!) this is hard but a vital step for the care of our child. We are still hoping to keep her in this hospital though if at all possible. The count is really low now and provided it doesn’t go up high we should be alright. She may also be moved to the transition nursery if the count goes up since there are normally more people to take care of her in there.
I have given my all to nursing her. I believe I am still producing less then she is consuming and the Reglan that I was prescribed is not good for me. It causes too many side effects to the point that yesterday we had to leave the hospital early because I wasn’t feeling well. I am still going to continue to pump and try oatmeal and “mothers milk” tea. But I think that the day of supplementing with formula is close at hand. Which for me is a big bitter pill to swallow. If anyone has any suggestions on this or what else I may try please let me know. I still hope to nurse her when I am at the hospital for her feeds but that will only be for 20 minutes at the most (total), hopefully 3 times a day.
Happy Holidays!
Jennifer
P.S. Those of you who were on the Lefse Leaflet please post to it I have been really out of the loop lately but I can easily read that blog. Let me know if you need to get access to it again. Thank you!
Emily is a “Preemie Donna”! Jennifer, I used Reglan, but also the herb Fenugreek to help milk production. It seemed to work well. I makes your milk have a maple scent. It might be worth a try, if you haven’t used it yet.
Hugs to that beautiful girl!
Susan
My supply took a hit after I brought my son home and stopped pumping. My doctor prescribed domperidone and it did make a difference. Worth a try!