Peanut was in Da House (for a couple days)

Yes, it's true, she was here! Charlotte came home from the hospital last Friday (1/19). Her hernia surgery went well, and after two more eye exams it has been determined that she still does not need the surgery. We will continue to go to the Ophthalmologist every week for a few months, and hopefully he'll just keep giving us the same verdict.

When we brought her home I was so excited to see how the dogs were going to react to her. They could have cared less. They were not impressed. They gave her a sniff and that's pretty much the last interaction they've had.

Things were going great the first couple of days. She came home with a feeding tube, but we removed the tube on Sunday since she had been taking all of her feedings by bottle. She also came home on oxygen, which comes with an apnea monitor that lets you know if she's a) not breathing, or b) her heart rate has gone above or below predetermined levels. She's also on a monitor that measures the oxygen saturation in her blood. That monitor goes off if her saturation falls below 90% ("desat"). This means that everytime she holds her breath to take a poop (which seems like it happens every few minutes) the alarm goes off. It's reassuring to have the monitors attached to her, but of course we still check her every few minutes to make sure she's OK.

Things started to go not so great on Monday when she began to desat each time I fed her. She never did it for Brian, though. What's up with that? The first couple times her saturation went down to the 80s, then it started going to the 70s. On Monday night she had a bad episode where it fell into the 30s and she turned blue. That's definitely something that no parent should ever have to see. We were able to stimulate her and bring her back to normal without doing CPR, but we were both close to starting. At that point, we decided that maybe she needed a rest from the bottle, so we put a feeding tube in. We gave her a few feedings through the tube and things were going well until I went into her room the next morning and she had the tube in her hand and she was waving it over her head like, "Look what I have!". We took her to the pediatrician on Tuesday and she told us that the desats were classic signs of acid reflux. From what I've heard, acid reflux is common among babies and people used to think it was just gas or colic. In preemies it can be even more of a health hazard because their nervous systems are so immature. When the acid comes up their espophagus their bodies basically shut down - their heart rate slows and they stop breathing. She's on medicine for reflux, but perhaps not enough or not the right medicine. We decided to try a couple different things and see if that worked, but when she had her next feeding at home she had another desaturation to the 40s and turned blue again. So we called her pediatrician and she arranged for us to take her back to the NICU for oberservation. As soon as I heard that she was going back there my stress almost completely went away. I want my little peanut home, but not if she's going to be doing that everytime I feed her. It was getting to the point where I was scared to death to feed her.

She will most likely be in the NICU for a few days. They are going to try and determine if acid reflux is the culprit or if maybe she's having issues with aspiration (aka "going down the wrong tube"). It's already weird not having her here, but I know she's in a safe place and she's in good hands.

Brian went back to work today after taking a couple days off to help get Charlotte settled, and it sounds like he's really enjoying his new position. He seems much busier than he was before, but he's gotta keep busy so we can afford for me to stay at home and eat bon bons. Where do you even get bon bons? Do they still make them?

I think that's enough drama for one post.

P.S. She's 4 pounds, 11 ounces.