Sophia Updates: 1/1 - 1/3

January 1, 2009: Sophia's weight went back up to 2810 grams. The scab on her belly button has fallen off completely and now we can see there's still one stitch that hasn't dissolved yet. Unfortunately she threw up quite a bit at her 8:00 feeding. Maybe her Protonix medicine hasn't kicked in yet. They are no longer using the HMF to add calories to her milk. Apparently she's older and needs to use Similac neo-sure formula.

January 2, 2009: Well, she threw up over night and so they've made some changes. I won't be able to breast feed for a while. They are trying something new - thickening her milk. They started by adding a little bit of rice cereal to her milk to thicken it, but apparently the breast milk digests the rice cereal pretty quickly. So, they've changed to "Simply Thick" milk thickener. April fed her at her 8:00 feed and said she only had one small spit up. Sam fed her at 11:30 and she didn't have ANY spit ups! I hope this milk thickener works. Soooo, she's getting the Similac and thickener in her milk and she eats about 2oz every 3 hours. April also said the Protonix can take a week or two to start working. That means Sophia will go home on Protonix, arithromycin, multi-vitamins with iron, simethicone (gas med), and then with her formula and milk thickener. That's a lot of crap to remember and keep straight.
We still plan on rooming in tonight, so I hope that goes well. The actual doctor even came in today and told us that it looks like she might be able to come home next week if she keeps her milk down and her weight starts going up again. yay!!!! Sophia gained 40 grams today!

January 3, 2009: The "sleepover" went as I had figured. No sleep. Lol. Sophia was really, really gassy. We're talking like teenage boy farts - so loud, so stinky. Man, oh man. I wonder if part of it has to do with them adding formula to her milk. She has never been as gassy as she was last night. Sam got about an hour of sleep while I was up and I probably got a couple minutes of sleep. The pull out chairs we slept on were rock hard and Sophia was being so fussy that we couldn't really fall asleep. We came home and slept for almost 4 hours straight. We had planned to stay at the hospital til 7:30 this morning when shift change was over - because our favorite nurse April was supposed to be working. However, we asked our nurse from overnight if April was working the morning shift or night shift and she told us that April had off today...so we just went home. Well this nurse was consistently clueless during the night, and continued her streak when she told us April wasn't working. Arg. She was in fact working. April called me at about 2:00 this afternoon to ask if we were coming back before her shift was over. She said a little birdy put it in her ear that Sophia would be coming home TOMORROW! YAY! She said we needed to get all her prescriptions filled tonight so that there weren't any hiccups tomorrow if Sophia was in fact being discharged. I feel like we have a million and one things to try to get done before tomorrow. We need to clean the house up more so it's not so chaotic after we bring her home, we need to put her letters up on the nursery wall, install the car seat into the car, and I have some little gifts that I wanted to make for our 3 primary nurses. I planned to make them some cards (doing some stamping and embossing like I did for our wedding invitations). I bought the cards and materials today, so hopefully I can get them all done in time to take with us to the hospital tomorrow morning! We are also giving them a gift card to Borjo, our favorite coffee house in Norfolk. I can't believe the day is finally here! ...maybe :)