"A Quick Update", or "Revenge of the Plastic Mustache"

"you talking to me?"

Hi everyone, it's Julie. Lou is busy reading as he's easing back into school and is hoping to attend classes this week. We wanted to let everyone know that Nettie is doing well. Her swelling has gone down significantly; she no longer looks like the Michelin Baby. She's gotten a good number of tubes taken out, the biggest of which was probably the ventilator tube that went down her throat. Hence the return of the plastic mustache. She's been able to audibly cry since they took the ventilator tube out, which is a good sign. Because of the tube and surgery in general, she has a lot of gunk in her chest. Poor girl, she sounds so congested, like a terrible chest cold, and she doesn't know what to do with it.  She was able to spit one up on her own, another good sign, but Lou and I both wish we could just get in there and hack them up for her. On top of this, it seems like she's got a sore/dry throat, also from the tube.

Another new item is that they're trying to give her a bottle and no longer feed her via a tube in her nose directly to her belly. We were able to feed her some of the bottle today, but she has to learn how to eat, which is difficult because of the sore throat and gunk in her chest. Also, she wasn't hungry since she had been continuously fed via the tube. I really wish I could have fed her before the surgery, *sigh*. I know that she'll come around. They're giving her a lump sum of milk now every 3 hours, as she would normally feed. She should begin to get comfortable with that and begin to feel hungry. According to the nurse babies have to "learn" what hungry feels like and what those feeling mean. Oh, the things we take for granted.

She does have some milky drainage from around one lung, which is normal, and they may not be able to pull that tube out until that clears up. The drainage looks like fat from my breast milk, so tomorrow the breast milk technicians are going to spin the milk to take out the fat. I guess she'll getting 2%. The tube around her other lung drained a lot yesterday but seems to have slowed or stopped now so that tube might come out tomorrow. We're hoping that in the next day or two she'll be able to leave the Cardiac ICU and move to the general recovery area. There it will all about her eating and putting on weight. The nurses said that she would stay there for a week, give or take a few days. We just hope to have our baby girl home soon!