Back to the bottle

Not much has changed with Emma. She felt better yesterday than she did on Wednesday. She has had marathon days of waketime - 12 hours Wed., 13 hours Thurs., and about 14 hours today. Unfortunately, her little tummy started hurting again today, and she was screaming in pain for a good part of the day.

Yesterday, the fantastic PICU doctor told us that it's fine to keep Emma's NG tube in for a while. However, if we get to next week and there's no real change, we need to figure out if we want to feed her with a bottle again. He said there's no need to make a decision now, just to have it in the back of our minds. Well, lo and behold, while my parents were staying here last night, Emma somehow pulled the NG tube out of her nose and stomach. So this morning, the doctors asked us if we wanted to put the NG tube back in (which actually isn't a big deal) or if we wanted to try to bottle feed her again. We decided to go back to the bottle and the really, really thick, grit-like formula. Emma did ok with them. As of 9:00 tonight, Emma's had 4 bottles. She choked twice on all the saliva she generated trying to suck down the thick formula, and she choked on her spit a few more times today. We'll just see how all this goes...Oh, and Russell I are spending the night tonight after having 2 nights off, thanks to our parents. Thank you, Emma, for pulling out your feeding tube and bottle feeding again when we come back to stay for the night. If any of you see me this weekend, hand me some under-eye concealer. And a pillow and a blanket.

Even if we continue to feed Emma with a bottle for a while, we still don't really know what the next step is. The hospital isn't in a really big hurry to make us go home right now, since everything with her is minute-to-minute. So, again, it's hurry up and wait.

The latest news from the PICU (that we know of) is that a little boy next door to us passed away. He came in yesterday after running out between two parked cars and was hit by a truck. I'm not sure if his parents took him off of life support or if he just didn't make it, but he passed away this morning. Please remember this family in your prayers.

Here's a picture from the other day that I treasure for 2 reasons: (1) Emma is snuggling with her Nan; (2) Emma is actually sleeping during the daylight hours. This was short-lived. (PS-Emma doesn't have a bandage on her face; that's the tape holding the NG tube in place. Lotta good that did us last night.)