There Can be Miracles: My Farty Baby

Note to self: if the baby is sleeping soundly, resist the urge to tinker with her swaddle blanket or reposition her head.

Emma update: We had our first visitor today! It was actually the respiratory therapist from home health; she came to download the data from Emma's cardiorespiratory monitor to make sure that it's working properly and to get an idea as to how she's been doing. It was interesting to compare the information from the log I filled out to the actual data from the monitor, and we also got to see the real extent of her episodes. All we had to reference before was a blinking light and the knowledge that her heart rate had dropped below 80 when the alarm went off... beyond that, we knew nothing until today. We got to see that she would, in fact, stop breathing prior to her bradys- either from choking or from (what I believe to be) losing her coordination while eating. I was curious as to how long her bradys would last because they felt like an eternity to me, and as it turns out, they last anywhere from about 10-20 seconds. It doesn't sound like much, but her heart rate during those times would drop into the 40's and 50's. Those really scary bradys I had mentioned recently were just as scary as I thought they were- her heart rate would sink down to about 41bpm for 20 seconds or so. It would come back up to just above 80, so the alarm would stop sounding, but would drop back down for another 15 seconds or so and sometimes it would happen for a third time. It looked just as scary as it seemed, and it was very unnerving to see that her heart rate dropped into the 40's... I just hope she grows out of this soon! While it has improved some, she's still getting them a few times per day during her feeds. This evening, she had a double whammy- first she lost her coordination and stopped breathing, and then later she choked and both times she had a brady. This kid is going to give me a heart attack.

So this last feed took up two hours of my time... she ate well and had no bradys, but was so uncomfortably gassy afterwards and she just couldn't calm down to sleep. So I held her, put her in her bouncy seat, rocked her, patted her... did everything I could to try to get her to pass some gas and calm down, to no avail. I finally got her calm, but then she started acting hungry! She just took a full bottle two hours ago and now she wants more... I'm glad someone has an appetite! I haven't felt like eating anything for the past few days. I'll get hungry, but there's nothing on earth that sounds good to me. So anyways, hubby helped out and gave her another 40mL's of milk just now and she took the whole thing and zonked out. Finally. But oh wait! Now she's upset from the gas again... I have a feeling that this will continue all night. Poor baby! Daddy just took her out of her bed and now she's lying on his chest while he lies on the floor. She's calm now but still fusses here and there, and is farting a bunch.

This tiny little child has some pretty big farts. Big enough to make us laugh- I can't figure out how that much air gets inside that itty bitty belly We can hear her clear across the room, and sometimes clear across the house. And these are no little mouse farts... these are full grown adult farts. But the problem is that she gets some pretty wicked gas pains and writhes for quite some time. I hate seeing her like that- it makes me so sad because I try everything and it doesn't seem to help. She has gas drops and they help sometimes, but other times there's nothing we can do. Unfortunately, her little body is just immature and we have to wait until she gets a little bigger before things will actually start to help her relieve her gas. Until then, we just have to try to soothe her and make her as comfortable as possible.

And since we're talking about farts, I guess we should talk about poops too. lol. As the laws of the universe would dictate, she only has a poopy diaper when it's my turn to change her or when I'm holding her and realize she's poopy. So far, daddy has only had a smear to deal with one time, and I've been the lucky one who gets all of the poops. I mean, she only poops once per day, sometimes twice, but come on... just once can she please make him change a poopy diaper?! lol.

I think we're finally ready for real visitors now that we've gotten things settled and are used to having her here. Oh, and we tried the bouncy seat with her for the first time this morning! She loved it :) And she sucked her thumb all by herself for the first time too! She did it while I was holding her and her head was resting on my shoulder, but we couldn't get a picture in time. Such a big girl!