Thursday, August 4, 2011

Sleep or Eat?

What do you like more in life, sleeping or eating? I guess that depends on the meal being served. If you are tired enough it will take a serious meal fixed by some serious chefs to peak your interest. But what if the meal was the same each day, I would think that you would choose sleep. this is because, like groundhog day, the next meal will come and it will be exactly the same. I often wonder why we worry about feeding our kids the same meals more than twice in a week. When they were born they ate the same meal for the first 6+ months. That is a long time. I do know the importance of variety and a balanced diet but do you ever just stop and ponder...hmmm...?

Eliana is faced with the same question, to eat or to sleep. Newborns and especially premies do most if not all of their growing when they sleep. There is a reason behind the statement, "Don't wake a sleeping child" :). The problem arises when Eliana is trying to learn how to suck on the bottle nipple, breathe and swallow all at the same time. It is a lot for a little one to deal with. And on top of that if she has had an especially tough day, such as the testing days, remembering to do all of those things is difficult. This leads to what is called Bradycardia. It is a condition where they forget to breathe. With Eliana this can happen during feedings. The consequence is that the oxygen in the blood drops, the heart rate drops and she becomes lethargic. Eliana's heart rate can drop to below 70 and this is a big deal for a child that has a resting heart rate of 150+. This is an oversimplification of the condition so if you want to read more just google premature birth and Bradycardia.

She will come out of the "event" on her own and it is something that she will grow out of so we are not panicing. It does make us pause and remember who we put our trust in. We put our trust in God and we trust Him to develop Eliana in every way needed to come home from the NICU. We trust Him to lead the doctors and nurses in their decision making and we can't wait until we get to take her home. But each event signals the start of a minimum 5 day period that she has to go through without any events before she can go home.

So while you wait with us, here is brother ( 3yrs in Oct) and sister ( 6 lb. 3.1oz ), Orange County and Bay Area. Soon the girls and the boys will be together as a family. Until then, we wait, hope, pray and trust

Thanks for reading

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