Kiran Post surgery November 12, 2009

November 13, 2009 mommytoabpluskb

It’s been another rollercoaster since her surgery and this is the first I’ve had to update.

Today is my mother’s birthday. She has been such a huge help in this whole thing and also my sister.

Today is also day 88 of Kiran’s stay in the NICU.

She did well immediately after the surgery and was healing nicely and not in too much pain. If she was in pain, they put some sucrose on her tongue and that helped ease the pain.

When her ventilator was removed, it is customary for them to culture her sputum. The culture came back positive for serratia. It is a nosocomial (hospital induced) infection that left untreated or unnoticed can cause death in a preemie. So far she has it just in her upper respiratory, it is not in her bloodstream and she was started on a 10 day course of antibiotics and that should do the trick.

On the same day as my surgery, this past Tuesday, the doctor told us that they were switching her to a higher calorie formula so she could gain some weight since she had hit a plateau in her weight gain.

So we visited her before my surgery and fed her the new formula. She drank down 55 cc’s and didn’t spit up much. After we got home from my surgery that night, we got all the bad news. Kiran had been vomiting basically the entire day. And they told us then about the serratia.

At 12 midnight they stopped all her feeds and put her back on IV and TPN.

The next day, Wednesday, she began getting cold, so they kept putting her under the warming lights. Finally, today the put her back in the Giraffe so she can keep her temperature regulated. She is still on the TPN and IV’s, and she needed a transfusion today since they’ve been testing her blood every day since the surgery. She actually looked good today since she doesn’t struggle to keep her food down. Her face actually looked pretty good today.

Immediately after her transfusion was over, she felt much more energetic and realized she was hungry and began screaming. Poor baby. The doctor wants her belly to rest a bit more before trying to feed her again since her belly is so sensitive and he wants to make sure that her food intolerance has nothing to do with the infection.

So, we are just waiting. Meanwhile the Giraffe is keeping her warm at least. One day she’ll realize she’s a Florida baby!

It makes me sad and angry to see other babies going home who were born around the same time as Kiran or even after. There are 27 weekers around her just thriving. Her nurse last night told me she was so disappointed to see Kiran like this again on IV’s and TPN. It made her sad also and she said she couldn’t imagine how Parag and I felt. The nurses always ask how I’m doing. Today when I saw her in the Giraffe again and on IV’s I broke down and cried for the first time in a while. When another child’s father asked how she was doing, I couldn’t even answer him. Luckily mom was there and told him and he said he was so sorry that she hit another bump in the road.

Here is a letter that Alex wrote to her sister, with spelling corrections of course: Dear Kiran, I hope you can come home soon. Because I’ve been waiting for you since you were in mommy’s tummy. I wonder if you can come home soon. I wish you good luck. You are a very funny girl you know Kiran? Love Alexa On the back of the letter is a picture of us all in the car bringing her home from the hospital on a beautiful sunny day.

Please continue praying for Kiran. She’s a fighter and she will get through this and so will we. We just want to bring her home so she knows our love, and our touch, not needles and being poked and prodded all the time.

here are some recent pictures: