Day 8 post-op

Well, here's our little puffer fish in all of her swollen glory. Believe it or not, she was more swollen yesterday. Our baby has a really defined chin, normally. All that skin is water logged. So, she actually didn't get any feeds yesterday (due to the swelling). But they do have her on 5ml/hour of breastmilk now. So, we are hoping that she gets some of this swelling off. Everything is waiting on that. Originally, they thought they would be able to get her breathing tube out today, but now they are saying end of the weekend. That swelling is all around her chest and stomach and neck, inside and outside. So, her lungs are swollen too, along with her airways. She's been like this for days and is having a rough time getting smaller! We are getting impatient. I'm dying for that tube to come out of her mouth. Once that happens, it's only "a day or two" until we can go home (which usually means 3-4 days). Anyway, you can see her staples in this pic. The doctor will take those out tomorrow and replace with tape. He likes to staple to allow for more airflow for healing. He takes them out in 3 days after putting them in so they don't leave track marks. She will remain gauze free from now on. She got two more drain tubes taken out of her chest today, leaving only one. So, we are left with one drain tube, one respirator tube down her throat, one tube (feeding) down her nose, one art line in her right wrist, one IV line going into her belly button, an arterial line going through her chest to her heart, one pulse/ox detector on her foot, one temperature monitor on her side, and three heartrate/bloodpressure/etc electrodes. That is a helluva lot LESS than she started with. Mom and Dad are happy, but we are getting really antsy to get that breathing tube out! Tomorrow, they will replace the line that goes into her belly button (that feed her all her IV meds) with a PICC line that goes into a vein in her arm and follows that vein all the way to her heart. I guess they need her belly button to heal and it's not ideal to have IVs going in there like that when she's on feeds. That is all i know for now. Thanks for reading today!