Abby Scheduled for Eye Surgery Today at 2 PM

Update as of Monday night July 10, 2006

Alright Abby Fans,

Abby's eye surgery is at 2PM today, Tuesday. Prayers people. Pray like crazy. We’re told it’s going to take a few hours so it’s a big waiting game. I hope the eye doc will be able to tell us what his gut feeling is afterward and how he thinks she’ll turn out, but I’m assuming he’ll give me the old, “we’ll just have to wait and see” line. Gggggreeeaaaaatt!!!!! Another “wait and see!” Sweet. Super. Okay, so anywho, on to some good news. Abby woke up at 2AM Monday morning, chomping on her fingers, smacking her lips around and looking for food. So her nurse grabbed a bottle and decided to try bottle feeding her. She took 20 cc’s! A new Abby record. Her previous was 15 cc’s by the way. And she did great coordinating her suck, swallow breathe stuff too. Way to go Abby. But the nurses were right about this bottle feeding being a roller coaster too. At 11AM that same morning, she only took 2 cc’s. Then at 5PM she took around 13 cc’s mommy feeding her. Mommy was super excited that she was able to do this. Why you ask? Well, feeding a preemie is a bit of an art. Abby has to be held in a specific way, at a specific angle and straight so her tiny airway doesn’t get kinked, you have to watch her closely to see if she’s breathing, if she’s not, you have to pull back on the bottle to give her room to breathe, but don’t pull the nipple out of her mouth if you can help it, and on and on…. I’m supposed to give it a shot too some time this week too. We’ll see how that goes. So that’s all great stuff. She hardly spells throughout the day now and she poops like nobody’s business. She gets pretty backed up though and she spends a lot of the time grunting and even starts crying because she’s so uncomfortable. It’s heartbreaking to hear, but then all of a sudden, after her tummy has calmed down, she just falls right back to sleep. The bummer is that tomorrow, she’ll stop her feedings, go back on an IV, go through this horrible, irritating and painful eye surgery, and only after she recovers will we be able to get her back on the feeding schedule. We’re making such great strides lately and it’s so upsetting to know we have to put it all on hold. You gotta do what you gotta do though and Abby’s eyesight is obviously the most important thing on the list right now. We love you guys. Shoot some good positive thoughts and prayers to our Abby tomorrow.
PS – The Cow Outfit is back!