Little Keagan

    Keagan was born at 7 lbs 14oz when she left the hospital she weighed in at 7 lbs 8 oz that was Saturday.  Now the doctor came up to the hospital and checked her out and said she looked great.  Monday was our first doctors office visit and she weighed in at 7lbs 7oz, they said everything else looked great except she looked a bit yellow and they weren't feeling great about her losing an ounce.  So they told me to come back in on Friday of that week.  After this visit I was a bit worried so I started feeding Keagan every two hours but she was only wanting to eat like 1 1/2 oz, I also "baked" her, laid her in the sun naked for five minutes on each side every day to help with the yellow.  Well on Friday she weighed in at 7lbs 10 oz and didn't look yellow at all so they were happy and told me not to worry about coming in until Wednesday of the next week.  Saturday Keagan was pretty lethargic and wouldn't eat hardly anything at all, I tried getting her naked, changing her diaper, flicking her feet and nothing made her wake up.  Well being the high stress person I already am I hurried to Urgent Care to have her checked out they told me they won't see babies and take her right to the hospital.  Luckily for us one of our friends that's a doctor that actually use to be Kabree's doctor until he moved away happened to be in town that day and he came over and checked her out.  He calmed my fears tons and told me some hints of ways to wake her up and to keep on the feeding her two to three hours, even though the night because it was important for babies to get back to birth weight with in 1-2 weeks of birth.  Well I stuck to it but Keagan would still only eat 1-1 1/2 oz in a two hour period and was still pretty lethargic.  Wednesday came along and Keagan weighed in at 7lbs 6 oz, that's below take home weight and the doctor was more than a little concerned at this point, he could hardly get her to open her little eyes during the visit.  He said that she had failure to thrive and that it was extremely important that we stay on the two hour feedings and do what ever it takes to force her to eat those two ounces, he also said she needed to come in everyday until she made birth weight and stressed that if she didn't improve he might consider hospitalizing her and IVing her.  He also said that failure to thrive babies were  more likely to die of SIDS so to be aware of that.  I have never said so many prayers in a 24 hour period in my life that Heavenly Father would help me figure out how to keep her awake enough to eat and that she wouldn't die in her sleep.  We did lots of Kangaroo holding (skin to skin) that night and our Home Teacher came over Thursday morning to help give her a blessing.  My friend Rachel suggested I use a cold wash rag, when ever she fell asleep during feeding just place the wash rag on her belly to wake her up.  The combination of everything worked because Thursday's appointment she weighed 7lbs 8oz.  The doctor was very relieved and informed me just how concerned he was the day before.  He said because she showed such improvement in one day he wouldn't make us come back until the next Tuesday.  Well I kept on it like crazy every single day, still worried she would lose weight or not gain enough but come Tuesday morning she weighed in at 8lbs 8oz.  The doctor was shocked at the gain and just how alert Keagan was at the appointment, he said he wasn't sure if he had ever seen such a turn around and because of the extreme change SIDS was not as big of a concern.  He did also say that now I didn't need to wake her up at night to force feed her just let everyone in the house sleep at night if she would let us.  He also said that he was confident we knew the signs and could handle them so we didn't need to come back until June!!!  He said that the failure to thrive tendency is still there and that if she stops eating or becomes lethargic again to bring her in but other wise he felt she was doing great!  I won't lie there were a lot of tears that first week and I didn't sleep at all at night, I would check her every 10 minutes to make sure she was still breathing and then making sure I was on top of her feedings.  Last night was the first night that I slept between feedings.  However, because I have been waking her up so much at night now she is in the habit : (, she did at least give me three hour stretches instead of 2 so hopefully we can work on that now : ).  We are just so thankful that Keagan has made such improvements and feel very blessed right now.