As if last weekend wasn’t eventful enough with K’s little G-button adventure, we’ve had more fun this week. Tuesday the lung doctor gave me the a-ok to remove her from oxygen. When she was in the ER last weekend, the doctor there listened to her breathing with the stethoscope he made some comment like “wow, you won’t need oxygen much longer.” Then Tuesday the pulmonary doctor said that we could just totally take her off of oxygen, watching her oxygen saturation. As long as she stays 95% and up it’s good. Of course she can dip down below that level but it’s staying there that would be the problem.

She stays saturated really well during awake times, of course, and during feedings. The main concern is during feedings and sleeping. During feedings she would be alternating holding her breath to swallow/drink and during sleepings, she would be breathing more shallow than when awake. Sometimes with sleeping, she’s borderline and right in that mid 90 range but has actually been doing better even since Tuesday night.

That night, she was hanging around in the 93 and 94 range for too long so I put her oxygen back on but at a reduced level, at 1/16 of a liter (where she’d been before at 1/8). The next time I got up, I saw that she had ripped the cannula off along with her stickers and was sleeping just fine, satting high. So the oxygen has not gone back on since.

On Saturday (yesterday), she went to the pediatrician for a regular 4 month check up and the pediatrician is very very happy with K’s progress. Her weight gain, height, head circumference, overall development, etc., all very good. She did get several vaccinations contained in 3 shots and an oral dose. The pediatrician also gave us 5 cans of sample size formula. I love sample size formula, the cans are actually a pretty good size, saving us something like $40.

On the evening of the 3d, K was officially fully on formula. I put her on Enfamil Gentlease which says it is for gassy and fussy babies. Because of her fundoplication, she was having a lot of extra gas problems. But after a few days on the Gentlease she’s MUCH happier, MUCH MUCH less gassy.

And then, sometime early Sunday morning…. dah, dah, dunnnnn, we lost the G-button again! When K woke me up around 8 I was going to feed her only to find the button gone. Her bed was wet and her clothes and blanket. Not terribly sopping wet, though, so I am assuming it came out sometime during the end of her feeding that she got from about 430 to 5. This time I called and I talked to the surgeon’s partner and I said, “you know what, can we just leave it out?” He let me make that decision, of course, and told me how to care for it. Steve was in a funk about it so I called the pediatrician’s line and got the one on call (there’s something like 6 of them). After spelling it all out for her, she said that if K were her patient, she’d say leave it out, too. She said she’d see K’s doctor later today so she would talk to her but she ended up calling back soon thereafter and said she went ahead and called and K’s doctor agreed, too. She was so happy with her growth and development she’s also sure it will be fine.

The Button has become a sort of convenience. There was one day last week we didn’t use it at all. K was up so late, she took a bottle at 2 that morning then slept and took a bottle at 8. The button has become a way for me to start a feeding in the night and K stays pretty much fully asleep and I go back to sleep with little trouble, usually. So this just means she’ll have to get up and have a bottle. Maybe it’ll actually help to transition her to sleep through the night more.

There are only two drawbacks. One is that if she gets sick and refuses to eat, she’ll have to be admitted to the hospital for a tube down her nose like before. But like the pediatrician said, we can’t just go on fear with her about everything and with a term baby who never had a Button to begin with, it’d be the same thing. We’re just going to be extra careful about everything and make sure this girl doesn’t get sick. Secondly, there’s an issue with her vitamins. I’m going to try to talk to the pediatrician about this tomorrow. K gets a multivitamin with iron, 1 mil a day. That stuff is NASTY. It is brown, it smells, and babies often puke it up. I tried before, K is not stupid – she refuses a bottle that has it mixed in. So I’ve been administering it through the tube. Her antibiotics will be fine, she likes those, but she hates these vitamins. But she was also supposed to be on these, mainly for the iron, when on breast milk. So with the formula, often those things are iron fortified, maybe she doesn’t need it anymore until she can take a chewable or something. I’m also going to try splitting it into smaller amounts. If I can get her to take a little bit at each feeding, maybe that will be fine, too.

And then if things weren’t just so crazy with her, Steve had to run out and buy a new water heater yesterday. Apparently the one we had was leaking and about to burst, so he had to get something. We had a gas one, he came back with electric. His brother came and helped him get it downstairs but then didn’t stick around and this morning Steve took the old one outside by himself (without my knowledge) and he seems to have hurt himself. Sigh. Plus, he was upset because there were some parts he needed and he kept saying he saw some around here in a bag “the other day” but we couldn’t find them anywhere. So there was no hot water until he got those parts this morning.

AND. Elijah was out at my mother-in-law’s this afternoon after church with them and he was playing on one of the lawn tractors. My sister-in-law turned her back after telling him not to mess with it while she was gone, she was just grabbing her tea off the porch. Of course, he didn’t listen and the next thing you know he was flying down the hill on the tractor, screaming his guts out, I’m told. He stopped when he hit a stump and it broke the axle in two. So Elijah has officially totaled his first vehicle as Steve says you can’t find the parts anymore. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that. Poor kid though, he’s allowed to play on the tractors normally but he needs to learn to listen to things, like when he’s told “not until I get back” or not to touch specific things. He’s lucky he wasn’t hurt. Though, it’s just weird how things like that happen. The hill isn’t that steep and my sister-in-law said the tractor was parked in a spot where you wouldn’t think it would roll, even if put in neutral. But apparently that’s what he did, put it in neutral (he NEVER plays with the keys present) and it rolled.

Wow, if things had been different… I could have had TWO kids in the hospital today…