NICU day 9

Hmmm...perhaps the word "abnormal" should not be cast about so easily by the nurse is all I'm saying.

I met with the neurologist last night and she advised that yesterday's EEG showed nothing abnormal. The only thing she witnessed was some 'depressed' activity in the region of the event Daniela had which was to be expected given that she likely still has some brain swelling. When I asked what she envisioned Daniela's prognosis for recovery to be, she replied "great" which went a long way in reassuring me. Apparently, I was all worked up into a tizzy mentally when there wasn't anything to be worried about. It made for a long afternoon from that phone call discussion with the nurse until when I actually spoke with the neuro.

On the slightly negative side, Daniela did have two bradycardic episodes yesterday where her heartrate dropped significantly (I wasn't there for the first one but I was alone with her last night when the second one occurred--I nudged her gently and her heartrate rebounded nicely--thankfully). The nurse was not sure why these incidents took place but there is the possibility that it was simply a 'blip' on the machine and nothing major. Regardless, the nurse recommended that Daniela be sent home with the apnea monitor for sure and the doc agreed.

Today A and I attended a mandatory infant CPR class (we last took one just before we had Juliana) and A then left to go tend to some stuff he had going on. That meant I got about 4 or 5 hours of straight Daniela time. We snuggled, we fed, we changed diapers--heck, I even got puked on after a meal and then crapped on when she had a blowout through her diaper, the onesie, and two swaddled blankets. Impressive.

Daniela is currently off almost every machine with the exception of the respiratory and heartrate leads. She is in a crib and is feeding on an "on demand" schedule. She's been awake more and more, wakes up about every 2 1/2 to 3 hours for her feeding, and generally is pretty easy-going. She even had her first non-family member visitor today :-)

The plan currently is for us to bring her home Monday (knock wood), probably late in the day. She will be on phenobarbitol for a few months at least as the plan is to slowly wean her from it by letting her outgrow the dose (essentially, the bigger she grows, the less effective the current dose will be until it's basically like receiving nothing medicine-wise). She'll be followed by the neurologist regularly starting at about 2 weeks post-discharge.

As you can see, it's been a night and day of continued reassuring news. More steps forward...hopefully with no more steps backward.

And now I'm off, headed back to the NICU for a late-night rendezvous.