New Doctor Today

Michelle stayed the night with Taylor last night and they sounded like they had kind of a bad experience around 3:30 in the morning. Taylor somehow managed to rip her C-PAP off and remove her feeding tube. You gotta like the spirit. Apparently, the nurse wasn't as enthusiastic. I'm a little confused if it was before, during or after but it sounds like the nurse was changing her diaper an there was also a mighty explosion. Probably all related, somehow but I guess the nurse wasn't too thrilled. Kind of upset Michelle a little. It sounds like the nurse might been running out of patience. 

Today we have a new doctor. They rotate around here, and we had her the day that Taylor was born, but so far have grown up so to speak with just one doctor to talk with.  Anyway she checked out Taylor and things for the most part are still good. They upped her feedings again and will start fortifying it tomorrow. They are also beginning to wean her off of her ivs and may remove the PIC line on Sunday or Monday. She is a bit concerned about Taylor's apnea spells (they are not getting better and may be worse) and bumped up her caffeine intake (I could use a bump too). Apparently Taylor was not on very much and she tends to use a higher dosage. I'm a little confused on how this is administered. I thought it went in the IV as well, but if they are upping the dosage I'm not sure how they can be thinking that they can remove the PIC. Anyway, a question for tomorrow.

Taylor is now back to her birth weight! 2 lbs and 7 oz! Time to grow!!!!

Taylor's head problems continue. The doctor seemed pretty open to Michelle's idea and was only concerned that the material being used had to be natural like cotton, so they could avoid any allergy related problems. We also found out we can't have plants in the room (oops) because of allergy issues as well. 

The other nurse who does the PIC line was in today and she cleaned up the the PIC spot finally. It had old blood sitting there an it looked horrible. She didn't want the old blood there because of infection potential. 

Michelle said that she had a moment today where she actually felt a bit like a momma. She was holding her while they were taking her temperature and blood pressure taken. Taylor hates having her blood pressure taken, and she got very upset. Michelle said that she rocked her and soothed her and said shhh and all that stuff and Taylor stopped crying almost immediately. Michelle also said that she thought Taylor's lungs were growing. Apparently there were some good loud cries before she settled down.

Taylor's oxygen saturation problems have continued today. It appears to almost 100% related to how well the C-PAP is working. There was a couple times today you could tell it wasn't working at all and sure enough she was having problems. They keep bumping up her oxygen. Then someone gets the C-PAP working right (the seal is coming loose from her nose some) an then her oxygen levels go to high and they turn it down. She just had another round that kind of disproved that though. The C-PAP is working okay (you can see and hear bubbles) but for whatever reason her saturation levels really dropped. Her heart rate was up a bit. And she was moving around. I don't know. Perhaps she's pooping or something. Anyway, she's back up on the oxygen levels again. Sigh.

You would think a gadget guy like me would like all these cool colorful graphs and monitors, but I'm really just getting sick of them.  I'm now trying to understand the graph that is next to the oxygen saturation numbers on the monitor. The pulse oximeter that is hooked up to Taylor shows some her oxygen sat numbers and a fancy graph called a Pleth Variablity Index. Its supposedly an algorithm that allows for continuous and automatic estimation of respiratory variations. Alas, I a just a mortal and can't for the life of me figure out what I am looking at. I'll have to wait to ask a nurse sometime.

I'm staying tonight and looking forward to holding Taylor. We won't go without the C-PAP tonight, but that's okay. I've been missing her.