TGIF because it’s been a rough first full week home.
Yes, overall, Avery has done well.
But, that isn’t to say it was smooth sailing.
Dehydration. Weight loss. Anxiety. Sadness.
Working through her withdrawal symptoms this week have been incredibly challenging.
In fact, last night, after doing well for over 16 hours, she began throwing up again.
Mostly mucus.
And then at last, her food.
With all of her weight loss, we couldn’t let her go over 13+ hours without eating.
But, we used every nausea medicine, again, and nothing was working. She couldn’t keep anything down.
She was so exhausted and weak, so we had to make the hard decision to go to the ER.
After sitting in a lactation room for 2 hours to avoid the busy waiting room, Avery was feeling better (we had seen no one) and Mom was growing anxious.
With COVID, flu, and RSV, the cons were outweighing the pros in staying.
We booked a room at a hotel across the street and left.
Avery slept all night (11 hrs).
Ate every 2 hours and, when we arrived at the clinic this morning, had already taken 12 oz!
Her eyes were no longer sunken.
She was smiling.
And her weight was up from the ER visit.
We were fully prepared for her to be admitted, but they said she was doing great!!
And the NJ Tube?
They wanted to put it back in. We said no. They said okay.
We’re going to keep her on the same dose of Methadone and go down .1 a week for now.
We can change the dose if she improves, but we’re taking it really slow.
One thing we learned last night (from one of our Instagram followers) that would have been helpful from the beginning:
her body is fighting detox so hard that it’s burning extra calories, hence the weight loss!
(It was confirmed at clinic)
We could not figure out why her weight was dropping so fast and were terrified what it meant!
This bit of info made a huge difference in our anxiety!
Here’s hoping we can continue to keep her eating. Get her weight up. Keep pushing through this wean.