Friday, July 25th - Happy 2 Month Birthday!!!

First things first, today is Kinley's 2 month birthday. Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!! We are so proud of you and can't wait to get you home.

We arrived early today so we could spend as much time as possible with Kinley. Katie (Kinley's nurse) is back today. She tells us that Kinley had a busy night last night. Her NG tube came out 3 times. Kinley pulled it out twice and threw it up once. Poor baby girl had to have a tube put up her nose 3 times last night.

Kinley when we arrived this morning.

We made it in time for rounds today. Dr. O and Delores (the nurse practitioner) decide to make a few changes today. First off, Kinley's feedings of 90 ccs (currently being given over 2 hours) will be compressed and given over 1 and 1/2 hours. This will give Kinley 1 and 1/2 hours where she is receiving food and the 1 and 1/2 hours without food. Secondly, they will increase the number of times a day Kinley can have a bottle or breast feed from 3 to 6. Any bottle feeding will remain at 10 ccs, but Kathy can now breast feed for 20 minutes at a time (up from 10 minutes). Thirdly, the only medication that will be changed today is Kinley's methadone. The dosage will remain the same, but the frequency that it is given will be changed from every 8 hours to every 12 hours. And lastly, Kinley's PICC line will be removed today. Whenever it comes out Kinley will be IV free. Before rounds move on Kathy and I ask for clarification on Kinley's 2 month immunizations. Dr. O explains that he would like to wait until Monday to do them because he would like to see Kinley off of her ativan completely before introducing new drugs to her system.

Kathy and Kinley had 3 breast feeding sessions today, each one with a lactation nurse on hand to assist. Our first attempt of the day was unsuccessful. Kinley was kind of tired before we began and messing with her simply made her fussy. The second try was a bit more successful. It took a while to get Kinley situated comfortably and then we had to revert back to the nipple shield before Kinley would latch on. We were able to remove the nipple shield half way through and Kinley would continue to latch, but we couldn't tell if she was pulling hard enough to really be getting a lot of milk. She had just finished a feeding through her NG tube so she might not have been very hungry to begin with. Going forward we will try our attempts at breast feeding right before she gets fed with the hope that she will be hungry. Our third attempt went a lot like the first. Kinley was really fussy and didn't want to latch on. Overall it was a pretty rough day, on both sides, for breast feeding. We will have to wait and see, but this could be the beginning of the end for breast feeding.

A family that we have grown very close to at Children's Mercy is going home today. Jackson, one of Kinley's close buddies from back in the ECMO days, has decided that he has been at Children's Mercy long enough and he is packing up his stuff and taking his parents home. Before they head home though, the entire family stops by to check up on Kinley and say good-bye. It is always great to see a family going home. (We are so jealous.) Hopefully our day will be coming up soon.

Kinley is officially IV free!!! Katie has removed Kinley's PICC line. It came out very easily. The hardest part of taking it out was removing the tape from Kinley's arm. Now she is down to only one tube, her NG/feeding tube.

At 6:00 pm it is time for Kinley's bottle feed. I take this one since Kathy has been hogging all of the breast feeding sessions with Kinley. Kinley takes the bottle like a champ. Honestly, I had more issues getting Kinley set up to feed than Kinley did taking her bottle.

After shift change we return to find that Kinley has thrown up and pooped in her diaper again. Kinley's nurse tonight, Cathy, was taking care of another baby so went ahead and took off Kinley's dirty clothes and stripped the bed of its dirty sheets. Then we moved on to her dirty diaper. Honestly, this had to be Kinley's seventh or eighth poopy diaper today. Due to all of these dirty diapers, Delores decided (earlier in the day) to cut Kinley's erythromycin dosages in half. This should help Kinley to have fewer bowel movements in a single day. When Cathy had finished with her other baby she took over setting up Kinley's new bed.

Kinley waiting for her bed to be changed.

Check out that left hand. I think somebody is ready to try breast feeding again.

Since Kinley had thrown up on herself, and was now entirely IV free, we ask if we can give Kinley her first real bath. Cathy gets everything prepared and then walks us through Kinley's first bath. Can you believe it? Kinley is two months old and this is her first real bath. She did great. She only got fussy when she was first placed in the water, but the remainder of her bath she was pretty quiet and content. After the bath we get Kinley all dried off and into a new outfit. It is after 9:00 pm by this time and that means that we can give Kinley another bottle. This time it is Kathy's turn. Kinley takes it all without any problems and then it is bed time. We can only hope that Kinley will sleep well after a bath and a bottle, but we have to leave before she is asleep so we can get some shut eye ourselves.

This isn't so bad.

At least I get to keep my binky while I am in the tub.

Um, I really don't think you should be taking pictures of my while I am naked.

That's better, fully clothed.