Maggie Update

CURRENT GOAL: She is working on increasing her feeding amounts, going down on oxygen, and getting weined off Morphine and Versed.

PROGRESS: Maggie is still doing awesome!

She had a day of rest on Tuesday the 28th, where they didn't change anything. The Dr. felt like they had been pushing her quite a bit to progress and she met their challenge but needed a day to just be.

Yesterday and today, they dropped her meds by 10 milograms or whatever the measurement is.... She has been handling the drop in medication very well, with pretty much no withdrawal symptoms.

She is on 1 liter for her vaporizer nasal canula, her oxygen level is at about 30% so she just has a little bit to go. They attempted to put her on room air yesterday but she seemed to not be quite ready for that just yet.

We have made a lot of progress in her feeding, yesterday we started doing non-nutritive breastfeeding. This is where I pump right before her feeding, and then while she is getting tube fed we work on getting her to latch on and possibly suck. We got to do this for three of her feeding yesterday and she did great! On the last feeding we think she even got a little milk and swallowed it down just fine.

Today we got to go a step further, I still get to do the non-nutritive but I also get to do a nutritive feeding, which is breastfeeding essentially. I have to pump off an ounce of milk before we start so she doesnt get too much milk to start out with, and then I let her latch on and suck for about 20 minutes. Once she has finished we supplement her feeding with breastmiilk through her tube. Today she took about 5 ml from the breast, so she had 75 ml through the tube.

You may be wondering how we measure how much she takes from breast, well it is not an exact science but they can use a syringe with her feeding tube to pull up what is in her tummy before and after to measure. Which is kind of crazy to see, and you gotta wonder what that feels like but Maggie doesn't seem to mind!

That is all of the updates we have for now! She is getting lots of love and snuggle time, and we have been moved to an almost private room since we are trying to introduce her to breastfeeding!

The process now feels a lot slower in comparsion to the huge hurdles she has overcome this week. They have gone up in the amount of breast milk she is given each feeding, we have also started dipping a pacifier in milk while she is being fed through the tube and attempting to get her to suck on it so that she can learn to associate full belly to sucking. Since she went over a week with no food she has lost the instinct to eat.... there are 3 functions that she has to learn to put together these are suck, swallow and breathe. The nurse said that most babies pick up 2 out of 3 fairly quickly and struggle just with one.

They have been slowly cutting back on the Morphine and Versed, We did see some withdrawal symptoms yesterday, she had some shakes.

They have also turned down her oxygen intake.