Please, sir, can I have more?

Food, glorious food! Miss M is a happy eater again. Yesterday morning she was so hungry her nurse called in the Neonatal team before rounds and begged them to let Miss M eat. They agreed but put in on a very, very small amount of milk to see if it all passes through in the correct form, size and rank. I was able to feed her at her 11 o'clock and 2 o'clock feed and again at 8 o'clock last night. That's 3 times I got to hold her and 3 times she ate! We B's rarely have trouble eating--especially the branch of my lineage.

During her 11 o'clock feed, however, Miss M got the hiccups AND I was burping her and guess what? For a brief blip on the monitor, her heart rate went to 215. One blip and she self-regulated and it went immediately back down to the 110 range. Within minutes the Ped. Cardio. doctor was at Miss M's bedside. Because the nurses and Mr. B and I both witnessed the event and chalked it up to burping/hiccuping, they decided to put a special monitor on Miss M called a 'Holter' (though I thought they said halter and imagined her wearing a contraption much like you see dogs wearing a halter). This monitor stays on for 24 hours and will give them a true read of what her heart is doing instead of relying on a monitor that picks up Mommy's bouncing knee as part of Miss M's heart rate.

However, it was great to get a chance to speak with the cardio dr. and for her to tell us most likely we will treat Miss M like a regular baby but will be a bit more vigilant with her color, sweating, etc. as possible signs of an episode. We will also be going to a cardio dr. for awhile once she's released (still no date on that). After the Cardio folks were in we also spoke with the Neonatal group and they, too, were very positive about Miss M. For them it's a matter of keeping her food down and then passing it through the right digestive course. Her lungs are good, her blood pressure is fine (when she's not mad at the nurses for not feeding her) and everything else seems on course.

So...we're still waiting and still taking it day by day. It has been nice that we can hold her and feed her. The milk fairy has semi-arrived as I suspect that she, like my body, realize that I'm sitting in front of a machine not a baby so I'm not getting the full bippity-boppity-boo routine from her just yet. Still with Miss M limited on her feeds, I seem to be able to keep up with her.

In other B Family news, Mr. B is very happy to have a wife back. For 9 months he's been living with the equivilant of a teenager. He's lived wth a moody, sullen, pimply, sleeping all the time and will eventually do chores but not before much eye-rolling, huffing and attitude person for quite some time. Now, he has clean laundry, 300 count sheets on the bed, meals hot on the table and the house is picked up at all times. Did I mention the wife is not me? It's my mom who arrived in Houston's Amtrak station exactly 1 hour and 11 minutes before Miss M arrived.

Miss F is trying to take it all in. She's definitely feeling the changes and we're trying to keep her life as normal as possible. The hospital has some wonderful sibling programs and we took her to one of them and she really enjoyed it. I'm lining up playdates and trying to keep her on her schedule of daycare, swim lessons, dance lessons, etc. She is very, very interested in the pump, pumping in general and wanting to know all about Mommy's, er, um, chest area. She has asked me to teach her to pump. I told her I could teach her to pump her legs on the swing but that didn't really cut it.

We are settling in to our new 'normal' though I have a feeling that each day will throw us some sort of curve ball. Luckily, Mr. B was centerfield in high school (and a good one), and I was the catcher in my brief, one season stint of elementary softball (and HORRENDOUS) so hopefully one of us in the B Family can catch that ball before it hits the ground.