EATING!!

I feel badly that so many faithful people check our blog and find no updates some days.  I find I go through spurts that I simply can't write every day and not enough is going on to warrant it either.  The last few days have been very mellow and not much has changed.

Today was more exciting with the start of feeds!  Hope is now receiving breast milk from a friend of mine.  She is taking 2 mls an hour to start.  She is currently doing well and we hope to move her up to 5 mls an hour tomorrow if she's ready.  The next two weeks will give us a good idea of how Hope's body tolerates food, and how much longer we'll need to be in the hospital.

Hope sounded very stuffy when I came in this morning.  The doctors decided to do a swab of her nose and send it away for testing.  This is a precaution, in case she caught a cold or virus.  I feel like she just needed some help with booger removal.  I asked the nurse to bring in a better suction tube and we were able to remove a serious amount of boogers.  I'm sure anyone would feel better after an extraction like that!  The stuffy sound has stopped and she appears completely herself to me.  We'll see what tomorrow holds, until then she is on isolation.

Sadie has been sick once again.  She had a low grade fever yesterday morning and I started her on regular Tylenol.  She put herself down for a nap at 2pm and was still sleeping when I got home at 5:30pm.  She threw up at 6:30 and then perked up and was more like herself.  Through the night she was up a few times crying and had a fever of 103.8 at one point.  I continued with the Tylenol and was hoping she'd just snap out of it.  Melanie sent me a message at noon to say that Sadie had put herself to bed once again and was asleep.  This is so out of character for her and I knew something wasn't right.

Sadie has been complaining about being tired for almost 2 weeks.  I began to worry that she had something funny going on in her body.  I had Melanie bring her to the hospital and switch places with me.  I went to Emergency with Sadie while Melanie watched Hope.  Sadie was seen quite quickly and they discovered a throat infection.  The doctor felt that it looked viral and should improve over the next few days with sleep, popsicles and Tylenol.  I pray that he is right and I don't end up back at the hospital with her anytime soon.  She's been sleeping for the last 4 hours and we haven't heard anything from her at this point.  I pray she's on the mend and I'm not torn between my two sick girls again.

They also took blood and urine from Sadie to look for anything that would explain why she is always so tired.  Nothing came back positive and they felt that she would improve with time.  Sadie was very unimpressed with the nurse for taking her blood.  She sat completely still until they poked her, then she was offended!  I have an incredibly horrible nervous reaction.  I laugh sometimes when I feel uncomfortable and am not sure what to do.  I laugh at my kids while they're in pain sometimes and it's so terrible because I worry the nurses will think I actually find it funny, which I most certainly don't.  I do feel a bit uneasy about how tired she is and hope we aren't missing something important.  At the same time, she's 2 and often repeats something that she has said in the past.  Perhaps she was tired 2 weeks ago, and simply decided it was fun to repeat often!

Nursey is feeling better and is back with Hope tonight.  Hope is such a big fan and is happy to have her buddy back.  We always relax more when we feel like Hope is with someone that knows her well and will pick up on anything that doesn't look right.

Please pray for Hope as her body is re-introduced to food.  The fat is being removed from the breast milk and she remains on a fat free diet.  Please pray that she tolerates this well and it's the solution we've been looking for.  We are praying that she will transition well when we introduce fats once again.  Please pray against any sickness in Hope's body and that Sadie will heal quickly and be able to see her sister once again.  She was very upset that she wasn't allowed to go up and see her sister today.  As for Shawn and me, we're just trying to keep on top of everything in our lives.  We are in a fairly good routine, but still find piles of things we hope to get done at some point.  I think everyone has those piles!