No More Formula! 3/10/13
Chris
After a night of worrying about our baby girl, we arrived at the hospital this morning at 7:30. Hattie had a good night--clearly her three feedings without any additives had made a huge difference. But it was only those three feedings and she was now back to the formula fortified milk. She was starting to get stopped up again. As a way of getting around the "tainted" milk, Melissa breastfed Hattie at 7:30 a.m. and she ate 14 of her 43 cc. Hopefully that little bit would help to reduce the amount of the formula in her system. Hattie seemed to get worse as the day progressed. She clearly needed to poop and kept groaning from all of her tummy pain. At one point she was pushing so hard that she spit up. That's not something she normally does and it reinforced our feeling that something was wrong. Our hearts were broken that our little girl was in pain and there was nothing we could do to make her feel better. Almost out of instinct, Melissa picked her up out of her bed and just hugged her.
Nurse Kristi had a couple of extra tricks up her sleeve and helped us move Hattie's legs and rub her belly. It worked! Hattie was able to poop and almost instantly felt better. Kristi also went to find Dr. McMahan who had given the temporary orders yesterday. She asked him to permanently switch her from the Neosure 22 back to the human milk fortifier that she was previously on. He agreed and we instantly switched her to new milk. No more formula!
By 7:30 p.m. Hattie was back to the bottle for the rest of the day. She never quite finished any of them but we could tell she was feeling much better.
Hattie weighs 2,226 grams, or 4 lb., 14.5 oz. She grew to 43 cm. (17 in.) long.
It's hard to believe the formula that was such a small part of her feeding caused this, but the nurses say they've seen it before. And it goes to show that every little thing matters with these fragile babies in the NICU.
Thank you, God, for making our little baby feel better.
