Croup Again?

Averi weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs 10 ozs today when we went to see the nutritionist. For once they were happy with her growth, although they did try to convince me she is shrinking again. Of course that didn’t stop her from upping the feed just a little bit more.

Averi is starting to move around a little bit more, which is great, but it scares me that I often find her wrapped up in her feeding tube when she wakes up in the morning. I voiced my concern to the nutritionist and she said that we can start weaning her off the continuous feed at night. It will take a while though, since half of her intake is during the night.

We changed her three feeds a day to four and slowed the rate at night. This is also going to stretch her stomach out more during the day, so hopefully she will start being more and more hungry.

I also talked to her about introducing milk into Averi’s diet. I am going to start giving her a little yogurt each day and then work up to giving her whole milk for 25% of her feeds and keep adding from there. If she doesn’t tolerate it, they will refer us to the Allergy Department to have her blood tested.

While we were there at the Neonatal Clinic, I asked for the NP to come listen to Averi’s lungs. She was up all night barking out coughs and at one point couldn’t cry because she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to push back out. Guess what? She has croup…again!

Apparently her tracheomalacia makes her very susceptible to croup and that probably won’t go away until she is about 2. So it will be runny noses, not eating, humidifiers, steamy showers, and sleeping upright for her birthday.

I also talked to her about Averi sounding wet and needing another Video Swallow Study. When she heard that we are still using honey thickness for her milk, she left and ordered the study while I was there. She also said that she will probably refer us to ENT, depending on how the study goes. Hopefully they will call to schedule that soon.