Sunday, September 20, 2009

Changing Pinky (UPDATE ADDED)



Other than the awesome dressing change, watch it again and pay attention to the pacifier battle.

Update:  Karsie has had a bit of good news lately.  We're still concerned with her oral eating, but lately she has been gaining weight.  

On Saturday we went in and we were told that they increased her calories to 24 an hour by supplementing formula.  However, she threw up 5-6 times that day, which is well above her average, so they backed off the calories.  However, they increased her breast milk to 23 mL an hour (keep in mind that the mL and calories are different, but their numbers are very similar). We were a bit bummed on Saturday until we started to see a string of weight gains that made us feel better about the throwing up.  She was up to 3.17 kilos on Friday night (really Saturday morning) and she jumped to 3.21 kilos on Saturday.  Tomorrow we'll find out if she's still on that trend.  

To add to that, we had a good breast feeding the past few times.  Two of those times she didn't get more than 5 mL, but one we're not sure what happened.  In order to find out how much she is getting, they weigh her before she eats, and then weigh her after she eats.  They can calculate the mL based off of the weight gain.  Last night she breast fed for about 10 min. and then promptly threw up a bit.  But we tried to keep everything on the towels that we weighed her with and then weighed her, and it said she drank 44 mL.  We actually were not surprised by this as Michelle had pumped a bit before usual (which makes her flow faster).  In any case, she took a lot of milk and did very well on the breast.

We have a meeting with Dr. Saenz and the plastic surgeon on Thursday to assess Karsie's situation.  Their next step is to put tissue expanders in Karsie to stretch out her abdomen for it to accept the organs.  If this is necessary, then we understand.  However, we've been doing some research lately, and we're very interested in something called a compression method (or something similar).  This is where after a few months they wrap an Ace bandage around Pinky and compress the organs inside.  Every situation is different, but we really want to find out about this.  We're pretty sure that our surgeon has not done this (it's not really surgery) and so it will be interesting to see how he takes it when we bring it up.  

Finally, Karsie should be off nasal cannula tomorrow.  Pray that her body does well without it. It's time to see her face! 

10 comments:

  1. Ohmigosh, that's GREAT! And I can't believe how AMAZING Pinky looks! Y'all are a great team! LOVED this video!

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  2. Awesome! If you guys ever decide to quit teaching, I think you totally have what it takes to be on a Nascar pit crew. Way to go. I'm very impressed with Pinky...and the credits.

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  3. all i have to say is...YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! Karsie is so lucky to have you!

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  4. That was great... you both are amazing at multi-tasking... the pacifier battle was so cute. And the music was perfect. Karsie looks adorable... eat baby eat!!

    Debbie Chaffee

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  5. watching it with that music made me anxious, like you guys were going to go too fast and bump into her little tummy, or something.

    I am praying for you and your beautiful baby and love reading your blog!

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  6. That was GREAT!! Made my heart race a little, HA! What at team!!

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  7. SUCH a cute little video! Looks like she is doing well. Isn't it crazy how it flops when they breathe? It took us a while to get use to that! :)

    Other than that it looks like she really doesn't mind her dressing changes. Blair always was good about her dressing changes!

    Hugs - Tiffany

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  8. That's awesome! You guys are such pros! Pinky is looking really good, and Karsie seemed so happy and active and like she was trying to help (by waving her arms around). Thanks for continuing to give all of us a glimpse of life in the NICU!

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  9. Yeah, for Karsie's weight gain!!!! I am glad you explained how you knew how much Karsie breast fed...if you didn't I was going to ask the trick so I could try it at home :)

    Cory

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  10. I was going to say also... since the base is so large I would think the compression would work well. Blair's base was so small... it looked kind of like a mushroom. I'm sure you have seen pictures on my blog. The compression maintained everything not coming out as well as made extra room so when they did surgery they had room.

    Hugs - Tiff

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