Sweet Baby

Brooklyn, Gunner, Jeremy and Ashley got Jaclyn this little red elephant from the gift shop and she thinks it is the greatest thing ever. She stares at it all day. Jaclyn has been doing much better the past two days. She has lost a centemeter in her stomach and has seemed much more comfortable and relaxed. The swelling in her legs has completely gone away and they look like they use to again. Slowly but surely she is getting closer to getting out of the hospital. Today the doctors said that when Jeff gets back from Snowflake they will show us how to get the feeding tube in and out and we will hopefully be able to feed her bottles during the day at home and put the feeding tube in at night to ensure that she gets all the nutrients that she needs. She always lays with her head really far back. All of the nurses that are new come in and say stuff about it but we just have to tell her that she has always liked to lay like that. They are also all saying that she looks like a Who from Whoville with her hair in a little curly mohawk.

Enjoying her animals

Her legs back to normal size
The nurses were keeping track of a red patch on her belly with this tape, but the surgeon came in and said he was not worried about it.
Once again enjoying her animals.

How does Jeff pass time at the Hospital?

He waxes himself with the hospital tape!

Week 2

Jaclyn very unhappy to have her mom put her down
Visitors: Aunt and Uncle
Visitors: Ryan Spanker and Steven
Just thought this picture was funny, Jaclyn had a little plumber when she got all unwrapped from her blanket

Jaclyn has now been in the hospital for almost 2 full weeks. She has not been having very good feedings. They put her on predigested formula as soon as she had her surgery and she doesn't seem to like it much but eats it since that is all she gets. Her poor little tummy gets swollen even more every time she eats. Since she had not been eating as much as the doctors were wanting her to they decided today that they needed to put the feeding tube back in. When she was having her feeding this afternoon her belly started to get really swollen. We called the nurse to have them check it. The nurse from this morning had to come check it out to make sure that it was really getting bigger. She agreed with me so they stopped her feeding and ordered an x-ray of her stomach to make sure things were looking good. When the doctor looked at it he said that she just has so much fluid in her stomach from the surgery and her stomach and liver are swollen so she doesn't have much room for food. They have been giving her medicine to help her body absorb the fluid so that she can pee it out. Since it is not helping enough they decided that they would start to give her a little more. They just want to be extra careful since Jaclyn is so small. They measured he little belly tonight and it was measuring 54.5 cm which is about 21.5 inches. They said that she probably feels like she is about 15 months pregnant. She is a tough little girl and is hanging in there. She is very content in mommies hands and only moms hands.

While the parents are away...

While Mom and Dad have been down in the valley taking care of baby Jaclyn, we have been causing lots of trouble. What else do you expect us to do. Gunner collected beer cans at the Flake Rodeo, we watched a parade, played with a puppy and ate LOTS of candy. Hope you are having fun mom and dad because we are!

Jaclyn Reese Greer

Jaclyn was born April 29th, 2008. She weighed in at 8 lbs. 5 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long. When she was 9 weeks old we took her in to the family doctor because her skin color and eyes were more yellow than we thought they should be. Dr. Coss decided that he wanted to have an ultra sound and some tests run to make sure than everything was fine. A few days later and a trip down to the Phoenix Children's Hospital to visit Dr. Shub, we found out that she had Biliary Atresia. This is a rare condition in infant children in which the bile duct between the liver and small intestine is either absent or blocked.

July 16th at 7:30 am Jaclyn went into surgery for a liver biopsy and exploritory surgery to confirm what the doctors suspected. About an hour after she went into surgery the Doctors came out to let us know that she indeed had Biliary Atresia. She had no bile duct and they also said that she was missing her gall bladder. From there they went back into surgery to do what they call the Kasai surgery, where they take part of the intestine and make a bile duct for the liver to drain. She then spent the next 5 days in the ICU.

She is now out of ICU and recovering pretty well. They are still watching her swelling to get it under control.