Back in Business

Long time no see.

Bella is now almost 3-months-old, weighs in now at 8.5 lbs and has grown to 19.5" in length.  She's begun taking to the bottle (currently I stop her continual feed for 1 hour prior to bottling, attempt to give her at least 21mL's of formula and begin her feed again). 

I don't know what I thought, but the first year with baby played out differently in my head.  We are ecstatic to have her home (even in those terrible, psychotic moments when she screams her head off from 1AM-5AM).  That is the thing though, we haven't had her home but only for a bit over two weeks. 

When she first came back home, she stayed with us for six days before having to be admitted into the hospital.  I had given her a bath and noticed at the end that her head was really warm, so I took her temperature.  When it read 99.4 I stopped even looking and began packing up to take her to the E.R.  Sounds silly, I'm sure, but when your child is still recovering from two open heart surgeries and the doctors tell you how dangerous it will be if she ever is to get infected, catch a cold or the flu you panic and you run to the E.R. at 10:30PM.  I didn't get out until 3AM, but ended up visiting her as sleeping in a very tiny cubicle wasn't possible for me.

After a week in the hospital, she got out and once more six days later she was re-admitted. 

Miles is selling his car ('99 V6 Camaro, anyone?) so he can buy a new one, which leaves Bella and I to gladly chauffeur daddy to work every morning.  We had just plunked her into her car seat, hooked up her travel oxygen and looked up to see that she was blue.  Literally blue.  Our baby was comparable to a Smurf.  Panic and blood rushed through my veins and I grabbed her out of the car seat, banged on her back like they showed me in Omaha, and began blowing on her face.  Luckily only after a few hits on her back and breaths on her face, she came back.  Our baby's heart stopped beating.  She had momentarily died.  In our house, under our care.  You can never imagine the immense panic that went through me.

For that she was sent back to the hospital, this time admitted into the PICU.  She'd had nothing wrong with her in regards to white blood cell count, RSV, infection....  It was a fluke and we've been further advised to just keep her home and if that happens again only call back if she does it consecutively.  O_O

We've put in for a Compassionate move from the Air Force so that, God forbid, if something morbid happens that we're within at least 1-2 hours of a specialized children's hospital.  Unfortunately we aren't able to state our preferences, so we have the possibility of moving to Omaha, NE (NO!!!); San Antonio, TX (pretty please?); Denver, CO (please!!); California; Minneapolis, MN (uuhh).  Of all the places, I think I will be so mad if we're sent back to Omaha.  I really, really, really did not like the place and as I got to know her ego-centric specialists, I lost faith in their abilities quickly.  Omaha, in my opinion, is a small town that has expanded into a mediocre sized city way too fast.  They seem to all be in over their heads.

Plus, I've never seen so many people run red lights in my life until I stayed in Omaha.  NEVER.  They drive like lunatics.

It's nearing opening time for the doctor's office and I get to call in to let them know she's been running a consistent fever of 99.5 - 103.0 for almost 12 hours.  Even on antibiotics.  I'm not sure if the fever is related to her g-tube being infected (I have NO idea how that has happened since I clean the darned thing twice a day) or if my baby has an infection that no one has, or will, figure out.  I'm worried for her.