Home is where we’re not

So, we’ve decided to go ahead and keep Piper at the hospital one more night.  Her airways are still sounding either inflamed or full of junk, and either way, I don’t really feel comfortable taking her home without the monitors.  If she did catch something while she was here (which I really won’t be happy about…), I’d like to get it figured out instead of wondering if it warrants a trip to the ER in the middle of the night.  Especially since we’re in the middle of the weekend. 

I am, however, fairly convinced that it’s either just some liquid in her lungs or inflammation from the intubation, but her raspy-ness gets worse when she gets mad and when she eats.  They’re going to keep her on the breathing treatments tonight.  With her Ds and prematurity together, we and our surgeon agree that maybe it’s better to keep a little closer eye on her.  We had the pediatrician from the floor come look at her, too.  To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of this hospital, and haven’t had great things to say about the staff.  The pediatrician suggested that she “probably” has a floppy airway since she has Ds, and that’s “probably” what’s causing the wheezing (even though she has never been wheezy before, it started after surgery, and the anesthesiologist has already let us know that the tube was a little too big and caused some irritation).  I got a little irritated—just because she has Ds doesn’t necessarily mean that she has low muscle tone (which, really, she doesn’t), and I feel like they want to wave away sincere symptoms because it’s easier to blame them on the Ds.  Maybe I’m being a little over-protective, but it still ticked me off a little.  Regardless, they are going to watch her for another night.  Whew.

She does feel better today, and tonight is finally starting to lose some of her puffiness.  She’s getting bored with the toys that we brought her, so my mom is going to bring down some of hers to have something different to play with.  (She’s not spoiled, really--)

Last night wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.  She decided to rip out the IV in her foot with her other foot in the middle of the night, but since she had been eating, they decided they could just leave it out (thank goodness!).  The down side was that she did it while she was nursing, and I didn’t realize it until I laid her back in her crib.  What a mess!

I am very glad that our surgeon is backing us up on this stuff- it’s nice to have someone on your team.  Hopefully this will be the last time we need to see Dr. Kay, and we can do everything else (which hopefully won’t be anything) at Children’s instead. 

Anyway, I guess I’ll end with the little face that makes everything worth it!

By the way—Sophie the Giraffe was Piper’s buy-off  toy for surgery.  I’ve been going to get her one for MONTHS now, but haven’t gotten around to ordering it from Amazon (it’s imported from France).  But we found her at a specialty toy store here in town.  Piper LOVES her Sophie, and highly recommends it to anyone who enjoys putting toys in their mouths…