Milk Snot

I thought yesterday was going to be another vomit-free day, but alas this was not the case. Hana was very unhappy in the car and proceeded to vomit all over herself in her carseat. Milky white snot was pouring out her nose too. It was pretty awful and she was very upset. Its usually pretty bad when it comes out her nose. I really hated hearing and watching it, my poor baby. It just seems like so much for someone so young, and so often too.

Unfortunately, it started again in the wee hours of this morning while her continuous feed was still running. Hana vomited a few times and then was awake from 5 to 6 am. She was difficult to console. Her nose was stuffed up and then she couldn’t breathe and suck on her pacifier. She vomited again later in the morning during the first half of her first feed. Then again during the second half. She was pretty unhappy about getting fed.

When it came time to start her second feed of the day, she became really unhappy again. We noticed that milk was just dripping out of her nose! We stopped the feed. I tried calling my mom, but no answer. I knew I needed to talk to a nurse. I talked to my brother-in-law and this made things better. I don’t want to embarrass myself too much, but to make a long story short, he suggested I start by checking the placement of the NG tube. I did this and I did not hear the swish of air in her stomach like I should. Then Paul said he heard air coming out of her nose.

We took the NG tube out and only a couple of inches was still inside her nasal cavity! I can’t believe we didn’t notice how long the NG tube was getting! But of course, how did this happen when it appeared to still be taped to her face. Well, it did and we probably should have replaced the tape several days ago because it had started to fail. Poor Hana, hopefully we didn’t leak too much milk into her lungs. (Hopefully NO fluid got into her lungs.)

We left the NG tube out for many hours, as an experiment. She had only gotten four ounces of milk that day. I tried giving her a bottle several times. She slept terribly. She was irritable and hungry. She finally drank almost two ounces of fortified milk (over a couple of hours). We put the NG tube back in with enough time to run one bolus feed before bedtime. Then we just added more volume to her overnight continuous feed. I hope it goes ok. Maybe it is finally time to push the bottle a little more!