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Friday, April 17, 2009 - Elle has had a wonderful day! Vickie and I got to her bedside around 10:00am - just in time to meet the nurse from cardiology that was there to take out her chest tube. Before she could take it out - she had to make Elle cry to see if the monitor picked up anything. I'm not sure the real reason to making her cry - but I told Elle it was the first and last time I would make her intentionally mad enough to throw a hissy fit. We had just got out the catheter to suction her because we knew that was a sure fire way to get Elle angry. I guess she saw the catheter being passed to me by the nurse because she flipped out and started crying. We didn't even have to suction her! The nurse was satisfied when she watched Elle cry that everything was good to go with removing her tube. Even though the procedure only took 2 minutes, I couldn't be back there to watch the tube being removed so Vickie and I escaped for a few minutes. We came back to find a pretty content little girl. They had given her sucrose instead of morphine. She was still in shock over the sucrose and was intent to suck on her lips to get every last drop of the good stuff! OT came by a few hours later to work on Elle's eating. OT was here at the same time that Dr. Morales came down to check on Elle. Of course, Dr. Morales wanted to get an x-ray to be sure everything looked ok - so OT couldn't feed Elle any more than 1cc - so her training today consisted of her taking 1cc of milk while sucking on her binky. She did great and the therapist was pleased with Elle's reaction to sucking and eating and breathing. We will get her to eat 1 cc at a time! Elle was finally able to get her 3:00pm feeding - a whopping 70 cc of milk! They are going to fatten her up! I was also pleased to hear this morning that endocrine decided to stop Elle's vitamin d supplements. Since she is eating milk, she is getting a lot of vitamins and minerals - but she is on a multi vitamin. Yesterday, I was talking with my cousins and they asked which doctors we will have to follow up with once Elle leaves TCH. I jokingly said - every doctor but the endocrine doctors. I was wrong! When the endocrine team came by last night - they told me that they will want to see Elle in their outpatient facility! Ahh! I guess we will be seeing a lot of doctors after our stint here is completed! Thursday night, Elle received her first personalized piece of clothing. I would have thought that my mom would have had stuff embroidered as soon as she found out the baby's name...but shockingly enough - it was my brother that came through with the first piece of personalized clothing! He had a t-shirt made that says "Uncle Benny = My Favorite." Talk about the ultimate in subliminal messages - this goes beyond that to blatant bribery! Ben is going to have his work cut out for him though if he wants to win the "favorite uncle" award. I know 2 other uncles that are already pretty high on the "favorite uncle" list in Elle's book!