Ruby Hope McKee Starling

It's been a busy couple days for Ruby.  We are working on three things these days, weaning sedation, weaning respiratory support, and feeding by mouth.  The one thing she is excelling at is the weaning off the respiratory support.  The problem is she handles lower percent oxygen and flow until her sedation is weaned or we ask to eat by mouth.  Yesterday she was on 23% oxygen and a flow of 1.  When we tried to bottle feed her she started breathing fast and her oxygen saturation levels dropped to the low 90's (anything within the 90-100 range is OK).  We have been unable to wean her sedation for the past couple days due to withdrawal symptoms.  After talking with one of the neonatologists we decided to bump her back up to a flow of 2 and 25% oxygen.  The thinking is that we know she can handle lower amounts of respiratory support, so why not give her more support to help get her through the sedation weaning and learning to eat by mouth.  We are all for this approach.  We can take her home on the amount of oxygen and flow she is on.  We can even take her home with an NG tube (Chris and I learned how to insert one).  We can't take her home on the amount of sedatives she's on.  We need her weaned off the morphine and versed.

The good news is Ruby gets to experience some "normal baby" things.  She got all of her two month immunizations today.  She also spiked a fever because of them.  We were told to expect this and I was ready for it.  What I wasn't ready for was that when a baby has a fever typically their heart rate goes up too.  I noticed Ruby felt kinda warm and that her heart rate was in the 180's.  Over the next half hour her heart rate went up to 210, and set off the the alarms on her monitor.  I promptly got really scared.  After all that we've been through, any time the alarms go off for Ruby it's pretty stressful.  Luckily her nurse knows me and did her best to calm me down.  The nurse practitioner and neonatologist both told me this was all normal.  It might be normal, but "normal babies" aren't hooked up to a monitor that makes horrible beeping noises when the heart rate goes above 200.   They gave Ruby Tylenol.  When we left tonight she was comfortably sleeping.  Lets all hope Mom can do the same.  When we say Ruby had a quiet day, we mean just that.  No beeping is a good thing.

Now for some fashion show pictures!

No post is complete without the duck!

The Duck now has competition in the form of a singing octopus.