Feeling Better ... sorta

Things are starting to settle from cold #572.  Andi has been coughing at night, and that makes for really restful sleep for me, ...NOT!  Between having to check on her, to calming Maddux who gets extremely nervous when she coughs, Momma Bean is a bit overtired.  Oh well.  Last week, as we laid in bed to watch TV, Andi was rolling around in her bed adjacent to mine.  She sleeps in a playpen sleeper.  It started out with a newborn sleeper, now it's on the mid level bed, but it has the ability to be lowered to the playpen bottom.  Here's the photo from when I first assembled:

So, now she sleeps at the "halfway" point of this, although, due to reflux, I have a stack of blankets or quilts on one end trying to elevate her head.  So, again, we were watching TV in bed the other night and low and behold, miss squirmy worm decided she no longer wanted to chill in her bed alone.  So, what does she do?  She rolly polly's in her bed and then gets her feet out of the side of her bed and manages to pull herself out of her bed and onto ours.  I didn't believe it at first, so I put her back in her bed and she got up on the elevated side, and pulled herself out again.  It was funny, and super duper scary at the same time.  Progress, but a set-back, still the same.  The next night, I decided I needed to lower the bed to the bottom of the playpen.  It is pretty low.  It was especially scary because she feeds at night and has the g-tube cord in her bed with her.  Normally, I just roll onto my side and she's a short reach away.  If I need to vent her or clean up puke, I've been pretty close and it's been relatively easy to handle.  However, on this lowest level, yikes-o-rama.  Having to bend over the railing in the middle of the night and hold a vent tube for several minutes, yeowza.  Despite just starting to take a yoga class, I'm not that flexible, or strong!  I'm still trying to locate my ab's from pre-pregnancy days.  All I did feel was a strain.  That low level bed was not working for me.  I don't have enough blankets or padding to throw in there to raise her up to a safe level, so either late that night or the next day, I ended up putting her bed back to where it was... despite knowing that she has figured out how to escape it.  Either that same night, or more likely the next night, due to the end of my cold, I coughed in the middle of the night.  "Uh-Oh", I felt my back tighten.  That's not good.  The next morning, by the time I got upstairs, I was crying in horrid pain, my back was completely locked up and the pain was horrific.  The worst back pain I've ever felt. 

That was Sunday.  I was worthless.  Coughing or sneezing was the worst.  It would provoke a back spasm and even more tightening.  It was awful.  Monday wasn't much better, so I called and got myself in for a massage Monday night.  OUCH!  People cringed when they saw me hobble in.  They checked me in without a blink, and I hobbled into the waiting area, "the tranquility room".  A lady already waiting in there saw me and said, 'uh oh'... and all I could really muster was 'uh, yeah... '  The massage therapist had his work cut out for him, and he really beat me up good.  He was able to get my back to unlock, but because one hip was super tight, the other side of my back was super tight.  I honestly need another couple of hours of work to really get it all worked out.  However, today my body hurts. It feels like I'm bruised, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was.

Because of Andi's & my cold, we haven't done much work this past week+. We haven't done the gait trainer, no oral feeds, just trying to rest and recoup.  Also because of the cold, she's been puking most feeds. Because of this, today I started a new system of giving her a half of a bolus, then rest, then the other half (total = 150ml), then rest, then start a new half bolus, then rest... etc.  And instead of doing four boluses and a nighttime drip, I would like to try to do five boluses for a total day of 750 ml.  Her current goal as I can tell is between 750 - 800 ml a day.  This way, maybe I can get to the point where she doesn't have to feed at night, and thus, reduce her reflux incidence.  Although it's been handy to get more calories in slowly overnight, it's also made me chronically exhausted because I'm constantly having to wake and check on her, listen for gurgling - which indicates a need for venting, or she is about to puke. Worrying that she will roll over and wrap herself up in the cord, or worst case, pull out her g-tube.  It's just a lot of worry that is impacting us, in every aspect of life.

So, now that we're feeling better, we're back to working on all things.  I am a bit concerned with her lack of oral feeds since her last surgery on her nose.  But, now that the snot monsters are gone, we can start really working on that too.  Although, feeding some every other hour, she probably won't be hungry at all.  Ugh.  I guess the most important thing at this point is getting the calories in, and keeping them down.  Without that, nothing else will work.