Hailey Coming Home?

Dad's Log:  There is talk today that Hailey may be comming home as soon as tomorrow!  This is exciting news and also a little scary.  The plan will be to let her grow at home and also to allow the MAPCAs to grow larger as well. There is some risk that they won't grow or may even get smaller or go away.  

Hailey had her swallow study today.  The images show fluid flowing towards her lungs and as a result, she failed the test.  During the test, they fed her a bottle of barium solution and used an x-ray machine to visualize where the liquid is going in her mouth and down her throat.  With each swallow Hailey was getting a little bit of the liquid headed towards her lungs and she even aspirated some again.  Even with the thicker "nectar" she still didn't get things flowing were they should.  So she will continue being fed using a feeding tube here in the hospital and at home too.  We will be getting trained on how to insert a feeding tube and how the feeding equipment works. 

We don't know yet if she will be on oxygen when she goes home or not.  When they have her on oxygen, she does really well and only needs a tiny bit.  When they take her off, she also does well but it seems like after a few hours she dips below her target level and they have had to put her back on.  

Angie got to file one of Hailey's finger nails today so I grabbed a quick picture of that.  They don't want baby fingernails clipped because of a risk of infection I think so we were told to bring a nail file instead.  She also got the IV removed from her left hand.  The IV in her right hand is still there just in case.    

The nurse technitian helped Angie give Hailey her first bath.  It was only a sponge bath and Hailey did not like it much.  That is pretty much par for the course for all of our kids first baths.  Aftewards, they wrapped her up in a warm blanket and she just loved that (see foot below).