The weekend was long and quiet. When I took over for M on Friday night, Tiptoe was a champion bottle drinker, downing 40-50 mL every feed. That really slowed up through the weekend, so that on Sunday, I was struggling to coax her to drink 30 mL.

She’ll wake up crying from hunger, trying to devour her little fist; then, after 10 mL of formula, she falls asleep. 10 mL isn’t enough for her body to function on; I’d wake her up, burp her, take off her clothes to get her to rise and shine, and basically do all the work for her except swallow. 🙂 Now that I think on it, for some of the other four, we had to do the same thing…it just *feels* more frustrating with Tiptoe because we’re in the hospital, and there’s a freaking *feeding goal* to meet per day. (Weight in kilos * 100; on Sunday, she weight 2.8kg, so she had to eat 280 mL of formula)

I tried switching out of the schedule a little bit; feeding her immediately when she woke up, rather than trying to hush her until the scheduled hour. That worked occasionally, but not in a way that I’d call stellar.

There was 0 drainage produced over the weekend, and her blood/oxygen saturation looked good. I think that the chest tube might come out sometime on Monday or Tuesday; I wish that the doctors would be a little more definite about these things. Or, barring definitive answers, CONSISTENT answers would be nice. It seemed like every doctor I spoke with over the weekend had a different idea about what was going on. Not just with her chest tube, but with her feeding as well. For example, the general pediatric doctor that I talked to on Monday crowed about how well she was doing with her feeding. The cardiology doctors were less than impressed.

The inconsistency frustrates me more than a poor report. If they were all to say, “She’s not doing as well as we’d like with her feeding,” I could process that, and its consequences. But having one doctor react positively to the amount that she’s eating, and another react negatively, sets me up for conflict. It forces a judgment about which doctor I trust more, and not having a personal connection with any of them, or enough technical knowledge to discern whose standpoint is more valid, it’s not a judgment I feel qualified to make. But I feel it’s one I *have* to make, because that judgment informs how I care for Tiptoe throughout the day.

What I wound up settling on was not something I’m (philosophically speaking) comfortable with– I angled my care to jive with the cardiology doctors’ opinions. Not because they were well-reasoned, but because they’re the ones who have the authority to release her.

^^ That right there? Really, if that’s the worst we have to contend with, I’ll be happy. I should probably stop trying to extrapolate this experience into a metaphor for my life-philosophy…

They took Tiptoe off of methadone on Sunday; her withdrawal symptoms (sneezing, vomiting, etc) have disappeared. The number of other medications she’s on is a bit daunting. Luckily, most of them can be taken orally, and she tolerates them pretty well. There is one medication– the blood thinner Lovinox– that she has to receive a shot for. I wouldn’t say she’s used to it, but she handles it pretty well. She whimpers for about twenty seconds and then is done.

One thing that is slightly disturbing– she doesn’t bleed after the shot. I mean, the needle is 3/4 as long as the width of her leg– shouldn’t she bleed a little? Her poor legs are polka-dotted black and blue from the shots.

This is a bit of a downer, as far as updates are concerned; but we’re hopeful that Tiptoe will be released this week. I can’t wait to get her home.