May 23

During yesterday's eye exam, it was determined that Elsie is ROP free!! The disease has regressed as it should, and she doesn't need any follow-up appointments for two more months. Hooray! 

Now, I know that you're all dying to ask me what this means in relation to Elsie coming home, but you're afraid that I'll bite your head off ;) Sorry about that. Well, what it means is that it's the second-to-last big thing checked off the list that needed to be taken care of before she can come home. The last thing now is to get her to take all of her feedings by mouth. 

I've had some conflicting information on this, so I'm not really sure what is what. At our last care conference, we discussed that it might be a possibility for Elsie to come with a feeding tube, and work on feeding by mouth at home until we don't need the tube anymore. The nurse practitioner who talked to me yesterday said that it's extremely rare for them to send babies home with an NG tube, and that Elsie needs to take 100 percent of her feedings by mouth before she'll be discharged. What's really going to happen? Who knows. Again, we'll just wait, take things one day at a time, and hopefully she'll be home before we know it.

In the meantime, Elsie still has a few things that are being worked on. We're still doing lots of positive touch, and she's getting better and less sensitive, but there's still work to be done. It has also been determined that Elsie doesn't sleep much at night. The nurse took a sleep log record of her sleep patterns last night, and the longest period she slept was 45 minutes. Yikes. This could be contributing to her sleepiness during the day and possibly why she gets so tired when we try to feed her. So today we had a nice doctor from PCMC come visit Elsie, do a brief assessment, and decided that we're going to try some Melatonin to see if it will help improve her sleeping at night. Can I just say how thankful I am that we are getting this problem taken care of BEFORE she comes home? Hopefully, once she improves her sleep at night, she will be more awake during the day and more willing to eat.

Today was a fun day for me, as I got to "room in" with Elsie. We wheeled her crib down the hall to one of the parent rooms, and I got to hang out with Elsie all day. Just me and her. The lovely nurse came in to check on us, of course, and to help with feedings, but it was the first time ever that I got to spend an extended period of time with just the two of us. The idea was that the noise and commotion in Room 8 was possibly contributing to Elsie not getting enough restful sleep; also, maybe the noise was distracting her from being able to focus on feeding. So we spent the day together in our quiet little room to see what we could do in a more peaceful setting (which makes me laugh a little, because it sure ain't peaceful all the time at home!). 

We didn't get a ton accomplished in the feeding department. 2 out of the 3 times, Elsie wouldn't wake up to eat at all. And the one time that she was awake, she was not terribly interested in nursing from me. After several failed attempts, we decided to give her a bottle instead. Then the little stinker ended up drinking almost 2/3 of her feeding from the bottle, which is more than she has ever done before, ever. Way to go, Els!  The nurse was pretty excited about that. Other than that, mostly what we did all day was snuggle, hang out, and chit chat. I did most of the chatting :)

In conclusion, she did get a lot of peaceful rest while we were rooming in, and hopefully the Melatonin that they start tonight will help get her sleeping patterns in order so we can get on this feeding and get this cute baby home!

Cute outfits from Riley and Aunt Mona!