Back to normal - not!

Just when we were starting to get back to normal and settle into a routine things had to get turned upside down. Last week Bella started having trouble keeping her bottles down. She'd take one and be fine, then the next one would all come back up when I would burp her. I took her to the doctor Wednesday afternoon and left with a diagnosis of reflux and a new formula to try. He said it would take 72 hours for her adjust to the new formula to see if she could take that or needed a different one. He had also mentioned something called pyloric stenosis but since she was keeping some feedings down she wasn't fitting the typical symptoms of it. As soon as I got home I started doing research on both and got some tips for feeding a baby with reflux. After trying them along with the new formula she kept down the next few bottles so we thought we were on the right track. Wrong. By the next afternoon it started again and we were starting to worry about her getting dehydrated. Eric called and they said to try and get her to their office for 4:00 so he could check her again before they closed for the day. By 6:00 we had gone from seeing the pediatrician, to the hospital for an emergency ultrasound, given the diagnosis of pyloric stenosis, told she'd be having surgery either that night or the next day depending on the surgeons schedule, and were in the process of being checked in to the NICU. They found out she was very dehydrated so they couldn't put her to sleep for the surgery until they got her electrolytes back up. Finally at noon on Good Friday the numbers were in the acceptable range so they brought her to surgery at 3:00. She was back in her cubicle around 4:00.

The pylorus is the ring of muscle that controls the passage of food from the stomach to the small intestine. In pyloric stenosis the muscle starts to thicken (no one knows why) shortly after birth until it completely closes. Once it closes, nothing is able to leave the stomach so the baby is constantly vomitting. It is quite common in newborns, typically between 4 and 6 weeks, but is 4 times more common in boys and typically the firstborn. The surgery is fairly simple - they just cut the muscle so it reopens the passage. The toughest part for her was not being able to eat. She had a bottle at the doctor's at 4:00 on Thursday (which she kept down until late that night) and couldn't eat again until 11:00 Friday night when they gave her a little pedialyte. They start the feedings off very slowly because you have to retrain the stomach muscles to bring the food down instead of up so it wasn't until 5:00 Sunday morning when she was up to 2 oz of formula they could take out the IV and start looking at discharging her. We got home yesterday after lunch - definitely an Easter blessing to be able to bring home a once-again healthy baby girl.

Thanks to all our family for all their help the last few days. From taking care of the boys to bringing clothes/food to the hospital for us - we were able to focus completely on taking care of Bella and didn't have to worry about anything else. The boys were excited the Easter Bunny found out they were going to be at Nanny's and brought their baskets over there for them.

Our little boxer just after surgery. They wrapped her hands in gauze so she couldn't pull the nasogastric tube out.

As Pooh Bear says - think, think, think.

Coming home from the hospital. Daddy went to get a bite in the cafeteria and ended up making a detour by the gift shop.