Friday afternoon

Well, more frustrations abound. Still trouble with this whole vomiting thing. She vomited twice overnight. Seems like it's just stomach juices, no feeds in it, and we don't think any meds were lost last night. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We did get to meet with a GI doctor this morning for a consultation, and he had several suggestions but not one single clear answer to explain it all away. He's thinking it could be nausea related to the methadone, delayed gastric emptying, or stomach irritation. So.......... we have more drugs. Geez! She's now being switched from protonics to prevacid, and we're adding sucralfate as a protectant, and phenegran as an anti-nausea drug. We'll see what happens. He didn't seem overly concerned about the situation and felt like she did have quite a bit of gas in her intestines which explains the slight abdominal distention. She doesn't seem uncomfortable, and she's still very slightly interested in eating food- she has a few bites of a couple things for breakfast, and now we are trying soft solid foods like cereals and crackers, and some veggies. Hopefully her appetite will increase since we're still cutting her feeds off from about 5am till 2 or 3pm.

Our other little worry now is a low-grade fever overnight. She got some tylenol and the temp came down to normal again, but who knows the significance of that little fever. Her ENT doctor checked her out again this morning and said her lungs sound perfect. There is just a lot of noise probably due mostly to the patch, but there could also be a component in her larynx/pharynx area that is still causing air turbulence too. He does want us to continue doing the nebulizer treatments with pulmicort just in an effort to keep a little bit of steroid going down where we worry about the formation of granulation tissue.

Emma Kate has been really bright and active all morning and just started to slow down a little after 2, still fighting a nap though. Before she could get too far along, we got her a flu shot- she was such a champ! She didn't even cry, it was over SOOOO fast, and she got a great princess band aid for it. She liked pulling up her pants and showing it off!

For some reason Gretta seems to be a little more fussy today and harder to make her happy... she has been "snacking" often and attempts at putting her down in the swing or the bouncer chair once she's fallen asleep pretty much always fail! On the upside though, her baby acne is nearly finished and she's got some beautiful baby skin coming through now! Her poor little chin is still very irritated (likely due to the fact that she's nearly always over someone's shoulder or sleeping on someone's chest... the girl has a hard life you know), but it seems to be getting better with a little bit of lanolin a few times a day.

Here are some recent pictures to enjoy! (In somewhat reverse order from how they happened)

Emma Kate is a big fan of baby Gretta- she was a little more excited to sit with Gretta in her lap than is portrayed in the picture... :)

Playing with Cree the therapy dog out in the hallway, Emma Kate got quite good at throwing the ball for her
Emma Kate admiring Cree's santa suit
Helping Mommy change baby Gretta's diaper, she is such a good little helper!
And baby Gretta, such a cutie!
Emma's "magic ball tent" Mimi found for her. As you can probably tell, we have quite moved in to the hospital room and made it our own. We have to pad underneath it a lot because Emma Kate has yet to figure out how hard the floor is- she keeps plopping her head down and going CLUNK! This morning she was pushing on the back wall of the tent with her head and managed to bonk her head on the floor *just past* where we had it padded up. It must have broken tiny little capillaries in her forehead because it left an exact impression of the tent fabric there... :P
One of Emma Kate's all-time favorites- watching "Babies" on netflix!