Water, water, water...and Ad Libbing

         

It's now been a week since our big move from the NICU to the NSCU.  Jolene is enjoying her new room all by herself and her night nurses say that she has some periods of good sleeping at night.  She can have her lights off and not so many people bothering her!

This week Jolene's goal was just to work on eating.  She has come a long, long way...little Jellybean has a mad gag reflex and we have to try all sorts of tricks to calm it down, but luckily those tricks are working and she seems to be eating easier and easier.  She also has reflux, which is caused from having all of her insides relocated and turned around.  She's going to spit up quite a bit but our goal is to keep as much milk down as possible so that she continues to grow.  Today she is up to 9lbs 2oz (which is great, since a few weeks ago she kept losing weight) and she is eating anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 of her required amount of milk each feed.  What she doesn't eat gets put through her feeding tube.
                                                                                                               

The picture above is Jolene without any tubes or tape on her face - the first time I ever saw her "naked."  :)  This was a brief period where they were changing out her tubes.  We are taking a giant step tomorrow, however, so we need your prayers!  Jolene's OT thinks that her tube doesn't help her gagging any, and that she would probably do a little bit better with it out.  She also needs to learn to get hungry between feeds (she has started to do this, but when she gets what she doesn't eat through her feeding tube, it's not very much incentive to eat more from the bottle).  So, starting tomorrow morning (Friday), we are doing an "ad lib."  The feeding tube will come out and we are just going to let Jolene call the shots for the next few days.  Jason and I will take turns staying at the hospital 24/7 and feeding her whenever she says she's hungry, which will most likely mean smaller but more frequent feeds (usually hospital babies are held to a pretty strict feeding schedule).  We have to hope that Jolene will take in the minimum amount required to keep her hydrated and then work up within a day or two toward the amount that she needs to sustain and grow.  If she can do that, then the tube can stay out and we can talk about coming home!!  We are nervous but excited!

This past week has also been pretty eventful with the weather.  Never a dull moment around here!  It's been cloudy and raining for pretty much the last month.  Never have I seen this much rain.  In my life!  Monday night I was at the hospital when another round of storms moved in.  Jason sent me a text to let me know I should wait a bit before driving home since it was pretty nasty out there.  I waited until I thought the storms had calmed down a bit and then headed home (about 11:45pm).  It was slow going but I didn't have any issues sticking to the roads I knew were higher.  I did see some of the lower frontage roads with cars partially submerged though.  Eek!  The lighting was also incredible.  I had no issues seeing the road, as it was lit up from crazy lightening!  The next morning Jason's boss called around 6am to see if he had left for the hospital yet, as she heard one of the roads that we normally take to get there was completely submerged.  We turned on the news and saw that most of Houston was flooded.  Come to find out, the really crazy rain came about half an hour after I left the hospital.  By the grace of God I drove home at just the right time and escaped without having to use oars to move my car along. The picture above right with the tall buildings is near the hospital and the highway that we usually use to get there.  The issue on Tuesday was then, of course, getting back to the hospital.  Jason finally made it there later that evening, thank goodness.  We then had another round of storms Wednesday morning that flooded parts of our neighborhood and knocked down trees which then knocked out power.  The forecast for the rest of this week is rain everyday. I think it may be time to start building an ark!  Either that or start raising frogs - we have ponds in our yard now that have tadpoles swimming all over the place. :)

Here is Emery getting to actually hold Jolene for the first time.  This little sister is infatuated and smiled and looked at her big sister the whole time.

Here is Grami reading and holding hands with Jolene.  Cuteness overload!