Update on Chloe

Well today has been really a miserable day. I know things could be worse than they are, but they certainly could be better too. The pediatrician on call today came to my room to tell me that Chloe’s white blood cell count has actually increased from the last time they counted. Which means that they will need to continue the IV antibiotics for the next week, and Chloe won’t be coming home with us tomorrow. 🙁 I am SO upset. I’ve spent most of the day just crying. He said they also needed to put her on a feeding tube, to be able to get some food into her tummy so she can learn what it feels like to be hungry. Right now she’s just been on IV fluids and is so lethargic, and has no concept of hunger that it’s not really working to go in there and nurse her. I keep trying, and I tickle her and blow on her, and unwrap her and touch her, and talk to her, and the nurse helps with rubbing Chloe down with her cold hands to try to wake her up and we are just not having any success with it. And they have decided to put her on previcid (for reflux) since she keeps coughing yucky stuff up, and she chokes on it most of the time. The only ‘good’ news I have to report is that she has been off the oxygen since yesterday afternoon, and she is breathing just fine now.

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The kids meet Chloe

Well Kyle left me for a bit today to go home and shower and walk Chewy, then he went over to Laurel & Roine’s to pick up the kids. Then he brought them over to see me. But right before they got here the nurse called my room to tell me that Chloe was awake and I can come and try nursing her, so when Kyle and the kids arrived I was in the nursery. There is a limit of only three people in with a baby at a time so that meant that Kyle was stuck out in the hall with the kids while I was sitting in the nursery nursing Chloe. So they left to go get ice cream, and Kyle got the kids happy meals so that they could eat dinner with me. After dinner, the kids had to take turns going in to see Chloe.

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So here I am with our brown eyed kiddos, the nurse was getting Chloe ready for me to nurse her again, and Jeremy and Tyra were so excited to meet her. Ethan had a turn to see Chloe first (so he is outside looking in, here), and he went in with Kyle while the others finished eating their dinner. Ethan just happened to finish his food first. Dinah didn’t actually get to go in the nursery. They said that they must be 2 years old or older to go in, and Dinah is just 3 months shy of that, so she had to see Chloe through the windows. But she was so excited to see ‘baby’ that she kept trying to escape from my room to go out and see the baby again.

Debby also showed up while I was in nursing Chloe, so she is the first auntie to see her. 😉 Debby was excited about that.

Complications

Well Chloe is having some complications this morning. The nurse came in to tell me that after I had nursed her during the night, her color started going from pink to grey and that her oxygen had been really low. So they have her on oxygen now, and the blood work they did on her last night suggested that she might have some infection, so they have her on IV antibiotics for the next 48 hours minimum. 🙁 They also ordered a chest x-ray, and it came back a bit cloudy/streaky, so the doctor said that could be showing an infection, or it could just be fluid that is still in her system from having just been born. I also have a high white blood cell count so they are going to be putting me on antibiotics as well as soon as we hear from the midwife that is on call today so that the nurses know which antibiotic to give me. So now I’m wondering what was causing the fever in me yesterday, because it seems to have caused all these other problems. 🙁

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Doesn’t she just look so sad with that needle taped to her arm. 🙁

I LOVE the rain :)

This has been a most beautiful spring here in Utah. Usually the weather is a lot of hot and a lot of cold. But this year, the winter is gone that is obvious, so it’s no longer cold. But it hasn’t really been hot either. We’ve had quite a bit of rain this season which I just love. Rain means that I don’t need to go out and water the garden, or the lawn, or the fruit trees. Here it is June and we still haven’t needed to turn on our sprinklers to water the front lawn. It’s nice and green, a bit weedy, but still it’s green! And I have only had to turn on the A/C twice so far this season. It’s just been so nice. Today has been another rainy day, so beautiful. The sun poked out this evening but I noticed that it was still raining, then I saw this HUGE rainbow:

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There is even a shadow of the rainbow above it that you can kind of see in the picture. So beautiful.