Day 21 of Life

Sorry for not posting yesterday, but I was in bed and asleep by 7:30PM and forgot to post. We had a lot of discussion with the doctors today regarding the discharge plan.

The nephrology doctors would like to see her potassium level stable in a safe range before discharge. However, before today, no one had said how many times the potassium needed to be in the safe range. Today, they said it needs to be there twice. Unfortunately, her potassium went back up to 6.6 mMol/L today. It had been 5.5 yesterday, and the doctors want her to be in the 5's. So they increased her dose of sodium chloride. We started the increased dose at 3PM today. She will get the second increased dose at 9PM. Then she will have a set of labs drawn at 10PM. Her second set of labs will be tomorrow morning. Please keep your fingers crossed that her potassium levels come back in the 5's!!!!!!

MedEquip is a medical supply company. They brought our supplies Lucy's NG tube for home. We have a scale for daily weights and the tubing and containers for the feeds. We will also have a nurse from the Michigan Visiting Nurses come out daily for 5-7 days to help us. Kris and I are doing more of Lucy's NG care - including inserting the tube ourselves today. If you notice in the pictures, the tube is now in her left nostril. Kris and I both practiced inserting the tube and we were both successful. As you can imagine, Lucy was not thrilled to have both of us sticking a tube down her nose.

Lucy continues to work with me on breastfeeding. She does decent when she is awake, but she doesn't always work with our schedule and is frequently sleeping during feeding time. Overnight, with the nurses, she is doing well with the bottle.

Our little girl is as cuddly and cute as can be. She curls up and reminds me of a bowling ball. Kris and I are starting to compete for time holding Lucy.

I have almost finished Lucy's Fourth of July outfit. Since she wasn't supposed to be born until later this month, I didn't buy her a July 4th outfit. Earlier this week, I started crocheting a little red, white, and blue dress. It is almost done, and if we go home tomorrow, it will probably be her going-home outfit as well as her outfit for Saturday.

It was bath time again tonight. Lucy's lungs sure do get a workout during bath time.

I will post more as we hear it. In the meantime, thank you for all your support. Please keep your our Lucy in your prayers.