Saturday was a fairly relaxing day for Sadbh.
To prepare for her trach change today, we had to manage things really well and coordinate with Sadbh's feeding and sleeping schedule. This meant that after she was fed, we had to give her plenty of awake time with some tummy time and other development exercises. We had to keep her awake long enough to wipe her out, but also not too long so she would end up having a melt down. Just before allowing her to go to sleep, we then gave her a nice bath to relax her.
Once we achieved all of that, we then tightly swaddled her and she was out light a light. That was the easy part.
Trach tie cleaning is a two person job, one to hold the trach in place, preventing it from accidentally coming out, and the other takes care cleaning the area around the trach, the neck and replacing the ties and other bits and pieces. Trach cleaning was very easy today, since Sadbh was in such a deep comfortable sleep, however when it came time to change out her trach, both Katie and I were terrified.
As I mentioned yesterday, we had only performed this procedure once before, and that was under the guidance of the Respiratory Therapist and Nursing staff at the hospital.
We had everything set up and we were ready to go. I have to be honest, I tend to be the type of person to just jump in and get it done. Since Katie managed the trach tie cleaning, and I was holding, the plan was for Katie to take over holding and I would insert the new trach when Katie removed the existing one. It took me a while to get mentally ready for this and my stomach was in knots.
After counting to three, Katie removed the existing trach, and the stoma (hole in Sadbh's neck) seemed to disappear right before my eyes. I pushed the new trach in and about mid way, Sadbh lurched forward and rolled her head to the other side. I was convinced that I had done something wrong, but in fact, everything went well. Mission accomplished.
As you can probably tell by now, Sadbh is well used to being in front of the camera. Since summer is finally here, we dressed her up in a beautiful summer dress and Sadbh had yet another photo shoot session. She didn't seem to mind, in fact, she seems to enjoy being photographed.
Take care,
Wayne, Katie and Supermodel Sadbh.
No comments:
Post a Comment