Puff Baby

Monday March 17th
12:00 p.m.
Cayman is still very puffy. The doctor is going to put her on an antibiotic as a precautionary against a shunt infection. They're not sure what is causing all the swelling so they are trying to approach it from a more serious side, not because they necessarily think it's from something serious, as much as try to prevent it from becoming serious. A cranial (head) ultrasound was done on her this morning...we haven't heard the results back from that yet. And a dopplar ultrasound has been ordered to be done on her right arm where most of the swelling is. What the dopplar ultrasound will tell them is if she has a blood clot in her arm causing all that swelling. If she does have a blood clot they will put her on medicine that will help her body dissolve it. Her settings on the ventilator are really low and she is doing a lot of breathing on her own, but they want to wait to take her completely off it until they get her puffiness figured out and under control. So it looks like another day or two for her on the ventilator. We were so ready to hold her and now that is being delayed because of all this. They gave her a blood transfusion in the night because her red blood cell count was low. So we're not sure what's going on...we're just praying so hard that it's nothing serious!

3:30 p.m.
The cranial ultrasound showed that her fluid in her head is about the same amount as it was before the shunt. They were mainly checking to make sure it wasn't more fluid in her head. When her head was measured last night it showed her circumference being slightly larger, but this could be easily a measuring error. If two different nurses measure her head the tape could be placed differently making the numbers come up differently. So it's really tough to know if maybe it isn't larger or that it is. But the cranial ultrasound showed the Neurosurgeon that her shunt is working so that's good news. The dopplar ultrasound of her right arm was done. It showed no blood clots in there, which is what they were concerned about. She's still puffy, but all the things that would make it serious are showing up negative. So Cayman just likes to make us worry a lot.

I ate lunch today with another mom (Cassidy) that has a baby girl in the NICU. Her baby was born 3 months early. She weighed only 2 lbs 1 oz. We really enjoyed talking and being able to relate to each other in our NICU experiences. We went up to the 8th floor where there is a family lounge area. There's scrapbooking, knitting, computers, games, dining, and Mike's favorite-video games. He played video games while Cassidy and I ate lunch. It felt good to do something fun and different. Mike's mom and his sister came up today for a visit. They sat with Cayman while Mike and I relaxed for a bit. I didn't realize how tired I was until I sat down to take a moment for myself!

Mike told me a funny story about myself today. I guess last night, in the middle of my sleep I woke him up saying "Mike are you going to take Cayman's milk upstairs and put it in the freezer for me?" He mumbled a "yeah". And then I said "I can't find it!! Where did it go?!" as I'm searching all over the bed for it. I do not remember any of this. I was talking in my sleep and apparently thought I was awake pumping. I guess when ya pump every 2-3 hours around the clock your mind tends to think that is what it's always doing even while sleeping.