Busy little girl!

Rebekah started her morning out by waiting. Her swallow test was bumped back from 9:30 unitl 1:30. So in the meantime, she slept through her doctors' rounds, had a feeding, and got all of her lines and leads taken off for bath time!

Daddy holding Rebekah with nothing attached (except the NG tube)!

Rebekah's surgeon's assistant, Kathy, told us that Rebekah's incision looks great, and gave us the go-ahead to take off all of the steri-strips from surgery! We are pleased with how well her incision is healing. All of the redness around it is from the tape, not because it is infected. Rebekah seems to be sensitive to some of the tape used in the hospital and sometimes when the tape comes off, her skin is red for several hours.

Look! I'm free!!

Of course, after bath time, we had to put all of her leads back on so she could be hooked up to the monitors again, but it was nice to have her free for a little bit! To be honest, the thought of taking her home with no monitors is a bit scary. It's so reassuring to know exactly what her heart and lungs are doing at any given time.

Shortly after bath time, the radiology assistant came to get us for Rebekah's swallow study. She did very well, and is now able to take thickened liquids from a bottle. The consistancy that we have to thicken it is "nectar," which is a step thinner than "honey," but not as thin as milk. :) Who knew it was such a science to make a bottle?? There is a thickener that we will be adding to her fortified breast milk so that she can drink from a bottle without aspirating. The speech therapist is recommending another swallow study in a few weeks to check Rebekah's progress. She feels that if Rebekah does well on thick liquids over the next few weeks, that we will probably be able to move on to thin liquids.

Rebekah trying the bottle again!

The doctors certainly don't waste time here! About twenty minutes after Rebekah's swallow study was finished, she was having a trial run at the bottle. Her speech therapist was very pleased with how well she did. In about 30 minutes, Rebekah met just over half of her feeding goal - she drank 27 cc's (almost one ounce)!! We still have a long way to go in the feeding department, and there is still the possibility for a feeding tube if the medications can't control Rebekah's reflux well enough for her to grow, but we had a great start!! Tomorrow Rebekah will have two bottles - morning and evening - and her doctors and therapists will be watching to see how she does with those before committing to any longer-term plans.

Rebekah has had a couple of episodes of her heartrate dropping today. It hasn't dropped to dangerous levels, just abnormally low for where Rebekah's heartrate usually is. Because of her particular heart defect and the fact that it is not repaired yet, Rebekah's heartrate is usally in the 140's - 160's. Today we have seen it as low as 86 one time, and several times in the 110's and 120's. Rebekah's nurse has let her doctors know about it, and they said they will be monitoring it closely over the next couple of days. We have no idea what may be causing her heartrate to drop, so we'll wait and see what it does from here.

We had a nice surprise today! We got a package from a ministry called Until Journey's End. Basically, they support families who are away from home due to long-term medical crisis. It was fun to open up a box of all sorts of goodies!! They sent stamps, notecards, travel size toiletries, gift cards to restaurants, a laundry bag (we needed one for Bekah!!), Drew's favorite pens, notebooks, and my personal favorite - a beautiful pink picture frame with Rebekah's picture in it - the one of her first smile!! Thank you, Tiffany, and everyone else involved in putting our package together. You made our day! :) Please take a minute to check their website and pray for some of the other families that they are supporting.

Nancy