Thursday, April 27, 2006

Ellie's Push Me-Pull You Gut

Ellie's first round of food had good results and not so good results.

She started food around 7:00 on Wednesday night. A syringe of breast milk got loaded into her feeding device which is like a very slow screw that depresses the plunger on the syringe a tiny bit at a time and delivers food to her stomach through her G-tube.

Abby chose to spend the night and by 11:00 Ellie had a full belly and vomited some of it for her mom. Abby tels me that they were both up until 2 Am and then they both got some sleep until Ellie began vomiting again at 6 this morning. Fortunately this was just in time for the doctors to show up and see that her bowels were moving as well and produced a real live baby poop for us. None of the skidmark stuff like we heard of last week, this was a big old dookie for Abby to clean up. A definite good sign.

So we have started the long road to getting Ellie fed and off of her TPN ( Total Perenteral Nutrition) bag. I think that last night was a good indication of what we ahve in front of us for the next while. Tiny steps forward, tiny steps backward and some long, long nights with a fussy baby.

On the bright side, this morning we met with the Child Life Specialist who told us about enrichment activities for us and Ellie here at Children's. It sounds like field trips are going to be encouraged and we are looking forward to taking her to walk in the hospital, and eventually even outside in the gardens.

1 comment:

kate said...

Hooray! I think this is a huge step forward - real proof that her gut works and it digested the breast milk! The result of this first feed could have been so much worse. The barfing we can deal with - bring on the poop! Nice work, Ellie!