10-11-10 9:50am

So I was able to make it down fro Riley's morning feeding and our nurse Lilia told me that Riley had a great night - she kept all her food down and her O2 had been good. We are up to 40cc of food every feeding now and Riley took that down in about 10 minutes this morning, so they are very happy with her eating. She also has had the IV taken out of her head and there are no IVs in her at all, which means they have stopped giving her any medicine.

There are a couple of issues with her this morning though:

1) Her heart rate goes way up when she is eating - above 200 sometimes and they want her around 140-160.

2) Her breathing rate should be between 30-60 breaths/minute and after eating this morning she went up to between 80 and even 120 at times. Her breaths would then go down to 20s at some times as well. It was almost like she was trying to catch up.

Dr. Dudley came by a little while ago and told me that she had mentioned that her breating rate may pick up when we met on Friday, but this was also the time when we were being told that one wall in our child's heart wasn't finished so I am sure we didn't hear everything. She explained to me that this excess breathing rate is probably from the extra blood being pumped into the lungs and the lungs reacting by try to oxygenate all of it. If her breathing rate stays above 80 we will have to have her go back on the feeding tube as there is a danger of the food going into her lungs if she is breathing to quickly.

We also had an chest x-ray and ekg this morning

They are checking to see if the heart is performing the way it was when they took their first exams or if it is better or worse. We are obviously hoping for same or better. I have a fear that the breathing is not a good sign. After the last 2 days of all positive news, this morning brings a backstep (the breathing) and that has me with an awful feeling. Again, my brain knows that not all the news will be positive every step of the way, but my heart aches whenever we take these steps back. I heard the NICU nurse order the ultrasound/ekg this morning and heard her say 'increased risk of CHF'. I hadn't heard this term used yet around Riley, so I asked what that meant and she told me chronic heart failure. I consider myself a smart person and I know at some point my brain processed that she was at an increased risk of something going wrong with her heart, but I broke down when I heard it out loud and even now as I write it.

I hold my beautiful little flower and she looks it me with these wonderful eyes and I can only think of the wonderful future that she has ahead of her, then an alarm or two goes off, her breatthing increases rapidly and someone is using the term CHF with your less then 4 day old child. I would give every muscle in my body to replace her little broken heart. I can't do anything but hold her and hear the alarms though.

Zoey note:
I can say that Michele was right on with her Zoey update yesterday, but her and I had a very nice night after I got home from the hospital around 7pm. I had a wonderful talk with her about how much her mom and I love her and then as a special treat I had her snuggle up next to me and go to bed in mom and dad's bed. She never gets to sleep there, so she was very happy about that and she went to sleep quicly after we talked about all the great dreams that we have. I have to constantly remind myself that I have so much to be thankful for and most of it is due to my Zoey. She is a very very smart and curious little person, who is so phenomenally caring for others. Like any child she can certainly have her moments, but Michele and I have at least started to raise a wonderful person. I have to make sure that she knows that through all of this.