Day 48: Groundhog Day

Remember that time I kicked you, scratched your chest with my claws, and screamed like a demon in an hour-long fit of withdrawal? Yeah, that was pretty funny!

Viv has basically had the same day for the past three days. She sleeps all night and morning, is awake and vacillates between calm and fussy for most of the afternoon, freaks out and needs a morphine rescue, and then settles down. Her freak out yesterday occurred approximately half an hour after we left the hospital (and so wasn't included in yesterday's blog update). Today it happened a little after 2:00, probably as a result of her morphine dose being administered a little late.

That's Viv a few hours after her episode. Amazing what a fix can do. I'm back to working remotely full-time so I wasn't around for today's meltdown, which meant Allison had to endure it all without a tag-team partner. The photo caption describes what happens during these episodes. One of us holds her in a variety of positions (none of them effective) while she lashes out in a fit of anger and screams at the top of her lungs until her voice starts to go. This usually lasts for at least a half an hour but usually more (it lasted about an hour today). By the time I clocked out from work and came down to the NICU Viv was back to being adorable. Mom on the other hand was looking exhausted.

This is probably our last blog entry for a couple of days. After our hospital day tomorrow we are headed home for the first time in over two months. I need to be there for work and Allison is going to get a few things ready for Viv. We'll return to Camden on Thursday night. Unless something momentous happens while we are away from the hospital we won't be posting again until Friday. Hopefully we'll be able to report that Viv has graduated to the final stage of her weaning plan when we return!