4 Months!

Well, not quite 3 months gestational age, but 4 months from her birthday. It doesn't seem like that long and at the same time it seems like forever.

Karsie has been doing very well today. She was extubated at about 2:00 p.m. and has done fairly well ever since. She has a nasal cannula for now until she can keep up her saturation level for a consistent amount of time, which we hope will be early tomorrow.

She was quite upset tonight when we went in, but not too terribly bad. This could just be that she was fussy or that she was too tired to really scream it out, but she went to sleep after a while and looked pretty comfortable. We hope that they manage her pain better than last time after she had surgery, but we're not counting on it. Part of the problem is that it's hard to tell if she's having pain or if she's just fussy, so that's not the doctors' fault, but when it's obvious she's uncomfortable we're expecting something to be done. So far it hasn't gotten to that level. She is on Tylenol only now and she seems to settle down after she gets it.

This is her G-Tube. It's a little blurry but you can see it comes right out of her skin. Her stomach is on the left side of her omphalocele so it sticks right out of there and it's only about a centimeter deep. That little tube that's dark (which is old blood from the surgery) comes out and you can plug the tube like a beach ball. Dr. Saenz said it's very fragile right now, so we're not sure what that means and when we can hold her, but for now we're staying away from that. We have had to put little mittens (or socks in this picture) over Karsie's hands so she cannot grab onto the tube.

We may start feeding tomorrow with pedialyte or we may just be waiting another day to give her body a chance to recover. We suspect the latter, but who knows. We're just praying for a quick recovery and that it works for her growing.