Stalled

So we've hit a bit of a roadblock. It has to do with stool (as usual), so for those of you who don't want to hear about it, here's a picture of a cute baby.


I was changing Blaise's diaper after her nap yesterday afternoon and what do I see mixed in with her poop? Stringy bits of blood colored mucus. So I called the nurse who called the nurse practitioner who called the resident who stopped Blaise's feeds and ordered a million tests. Two x-rays, two blood cultures, two stool cultures, one urine culture, and two complete blood counts later and, apparently, nothing's wrong. She's acting totally normal and has no symptoms of anything. Her belly is soft and not tender. My guess is just that the feeding increases went a bit fast and the increase in stool irritated the lining of her gut, but we have to rule out all sorts of scary things first (like a structural problem with her bowel). It looks like we're in the clear on anything big, though.

Unfortunately, this means that they've stopped her feeds and aren't planning to start them again until tomorrow morning at the earliest. She's really angry about not being fed for 30+ hours, but we weren't able to convince them to start even minimal feeding. We're guessing that this also means that the original plan of stopping her IV nutrition on Saturday has been scrapped. No idea yet what the plan is for restarting feeds and increases. Needless to say, it's very frustrating to be so close to her feeding goal and then take a giant step backward.