Monday, August 11th - Going Home Soon!

Kinley's nurse today is Tiffany. She tells me that Kinley took between 40 and 45 ccs at both her 5:00 and 8:00 am bottle feedings.

Kinley felt like showing off at her 11:00 am feeding by taking 80 ccs from her bottle, but this was not a very accurate reading of her true appetite because she had a vitamin induced vomit in the middle of her bottle that freed up some room. Tiffany thought that Kinley threw up around 10 ccs. It is so hard to judge how much comes up because I thought that it looked like a bit more, maybe close to 20 ccs.

I missed rounds today, but there were not any changes. Dr. P stopped by a bit later though to talk with me and I informed her that Kathy and I had made the decision to bring Kinley home as soon as possible. I have been a bit concerned on bringing her home too early, but now that I have had more time to think about it and I would prefer to bring Kinley home with a feeding tube and not have to use it (if everything goes well) than go home without a tube and need it (if anything were to go wrong.) There are a few more things for Kathy and I need to learn (I still have to place an NG tube) before we can go home so it will probably be closer to a week before we leave, this coming weekend would the earliest. Dr. P tells me to talk with Kathy and pick a day that works best for us to take Kinley home.

Nancy, from occupational therapy, stopped by right before 2:00 pm to work with Kinley on some rolling and tummy time. Nancy also stuck around for Kinley's 2:00 pm bottle and together we were able to get Kinley to eat 76 legitimate ccs from her bottle. No vomiting in the middle of her bottle to make more room for food. The remaining 14 ccs were given through her NG tube over half an hour.

Kinley was able to keep everything down and while she napped we continued further into Harry Potter 2. At her 5:00 pm bottle feed, Kathy and I were able to get Kinley to take 64 ccs.

I (Kathy) stayed through shift change while Kevin went home to get some rest. Shannon was Kinley's night nurse and she had already started giving Kinley her 8 pm bottle before I was allowed back to the bedside. Shannon had been feeding Kinley for about 15 minutes before I arrived. Shannon informed me that Kinley had taken only 25ccs before getting really upset. Kinley was screaming when I arrived so I immediately tried to calm her down. This was not an easy task. Kinley finally settled down a little bit, but by that time her half hour feeding session was almost over. I was only able to get Kinley to take another 5ccs, so she had to have the remaining 60ccs through her NG. For the remainder of the night, Kiney was pretty fussy and would jump at every little noise. It took a while to calm her down, only to have her get startled again by another noise and start the calming down process again. I guess Kevin has the magic touch when it comes to feeding Kinley and getting her to rest after her feed. Hopefully Kinley was just cranky from being tired since she did not sleep much during the day today.