Hospital Stay

Sunday, March 20, 2011 10:51 PM, CDT

It has been a really rough few days for sweet Anastasia and her stressed out parents.  She was admitted to Children’s Hospital yesterday after a long Friday night of gagging, holding her breath and looking really pitiful.  There are several things going on it seems.  They think she has reflux, thus the sticking out her tongue and gagging, so hopefully some Zantac will help with that issue.  She has also started struggling with feeding and slowing down on weight gain.  They increased her calories the latter part of last week by adding more formula to the breast milk to get her back on target with weight gain, but she has been struggling with the increased density.    

Ultimately, last night they decided to put in an NG feeding tube to assist her with her feeds.  She is expending too much energy eating, which causes her to burn too many calories, which is counterproductive.  She is allowed to feed from the bottle for 20 minutes and then takes the rest via tube.  She did really well the first 12 hours but then started throwing up.  We are going to back the calories down to see if that helps the situation.  Unfortunately, she has lost a little bit of weight in the last 24 hours.  Hopefully we can get her caught back up in the next couple of days. 

They reported that she has very wet lungs, which is more than likely a combination of her heart condition and what seems like a really bad cold.  She is very congested, has a terrible cough, and feels really crappy!  She is just so pitiful looking.  She has literally cried more in the last 24 hours than she has in the last 9 weeks, so much so that she is hoarse.  It breaks our hearts to see her struggle like this.  She also has to have oxygen support which oddly enough can be more detrimental than helpful to someone with a large VSD.  Apparently it is a fine balance between keeping her oxygen level where it needs to be but not giving her too much, so they are working to wean her off of it.  From what I understand, which with limited sleep and tremendous stress is somewhat sketchy, they are trying to determine if her symptoms are more related to her bad cold or congestive heart failure.

Even though this situation is dreadful I am relieved that we are in such great hands.  The nurses have been incredible and have gone above and beyond to care for Anastasia.  She has constant ups and downs throughout the day, but I am hopeful that she will start to have more ups than downs soon!  I really miss her happy little coos and smiles that I have not seen for awhile.  I can’t wait to have my precious little Annie back to feeling better.

It has been REALLY hard to be away from Alexander, but luckily he has had my mom, Aunt Katie, and Cousins Ryan and Emily to keep him busy and happy.  I wonder what kind of bad habits I will have to break.  HAHA, just kidding of course!