Anna Grace - January 16

Well, last night about 8:00 pm the nurse came in to change the dressing on her chest (because she still has an infection on her incision site) and to give her her 8:00 meds. When she was doing this she suspected that Anna IV's might have become misplaced in her little hand so she had to fiddle and fool with it until she could determine that it was still a good IV. After that it was a dressing change on her chest & then a diaper change. And then as soon as we put the clean diaper on she had another bowel movement so yet another diaper change. The whole while Anna Grace was crying & crying - it took about an hour to do all this & when we finally got her swaddled & settled into bed she threw up all over herself & everything. So we had to change her sheets, her chest dressing & her clothes. This took another 45 minutes. We turned off her feeds for about 2 hours to give her tummy time to rest after vomiting. It was heart wrenching.

I came up with a theory that I wanted to test... I don't think her tummy loves the Portagen, but I don't think it is making her throw up - I think the vomiting is a result of the excessive crying so last night I resolved to do whatever it took to keep her from crying. So, basically I stood by her bed for the night & kept her paci in her mouth. She & I did sleep from 11:00 - 1:45 & then again from 4:45 - 6:00. But, no vomiting last night.

So..... how does one keep a baby from crying???? If she vomits we have to turn her feeds off & that sets us back from moving forward with increasing her ml per hour to her target of 25 ml per hour (right now she is at 18 ml per hour). So... at least for right now my goal is to keep Anna Grace from crying.

Please pray for me as it is exhausting - I know she doesn't feel good - her tummy hurts from this formula, she still has a chest tube in & she has an infection on her incision site. Not to mention she had open heart surgery not even 2 weeks ago so I know her little body must still be so sore from having her chest opened. Please pray for healing and rest for Anna Grace.

I was weeping & crying out to the Lord over her this morning. There is really nothing the doctors can do for her with regards to this - only our Lord who is the GREAT PHYSICIAN can help Anna Grace right now.

Brian will be up here in a few hours to relieve me for a little while. I hope to go back to the townhome & try to take a nap to prepare for another long night tonight. I sure will miss him when he goes back to Spartanburg on Sunday.