The Long Awaited Update

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past few days. The blog was forced to the back burner for awhile as I adjusted to being back to work. It was e-rate Form 471 filing season so it was a bit hectic and I actually had to take work home. I wouldn't give the responsibility to do e-rate filing to my worst enemy. Way to much paperwork - much worse than filing taxes. I'm thankful that's all done now and things are back to "normal".

Sadie had a good stretch of eating her whole 56mL bottle for about a day and a half. She has since become more and more tired and therefore not waking up to eat. She's now only drinking a full bottle every once in a while. Her average is between 30-45mL. She is up to 58mL every feeding and is still on the every other bottle/gavage schedule.

They have been measuring her hematocrit levels for the past couple weeks. It's been getting lower every time and this could be the cause of her sleepiness. On Saturday, they measured it again and it was down to 30. Because of this, they started her on a drug called Epogen. This will help her body produce more red blood cells. Sadie will have an injection every other day for two weeks. Once her red blood cell count is normal, Sadie should be more alert and less sleepy. This should help her stay awake to finish her whole bottle.

How long is she going to be in the hospital? Well, we really don't know - it's up to her. The Epogen needs to start working and then Sadie should start progressing on her feedings again. Once Sadie shows the nurses/doctors that she can eat her whole bottle every other feeding, they will increase the bottles to two out of three feedings. Once she shows she had handle that, they will bottle feed her every time. Once she does that for a while, we get to take her home, provided that nothing else comes up. We are hoping that all will happen in two to three weeks, but we really don't know. It could be less or it could be more.

Oh, and she's 6 pounds, 9 ounces as of last night.