Today was Danika's 2nd barium swallow test. She is ready to be a good patient with her little baby hospital gown on! She did sooooooo good today! She passed the test with flying colors! Before we started the test I told them that she needs to keep drinking thinner and thinner liquids until she aspirates into her lungs. Her pulmonologist wants to know what she aspirates on, not just what she penetrates on. Dr. Rao says that everyone has penetration. It's aspiration that we should be worried about.

Penetration is when instead of the barium going from the mouth down into the esophagus like it's suppose to, it enters the opening to the trachea (on it's way to the lungs) but comes back up and continues to make it's way down the esophagus to the stomach.  

Aspiration is when the barium goes from the mouth, passes the trachea and into the top portion of the lungs. Usually the bodies response to this is to start coughing it up to get it out of the lungs and back down the esophagus. You can get pneumonia from aspiration.

During Danika's test, she had one episode of "deep penetration", but it never got any worse than that. They even let her drink for a while so that she could get fatigued and lazy and then see if they could see aspiration. She never aspirated!!! So she no longer has to be on a nectar think consistency! She can be on ultra-thin liquids which is the consistency of breast milk. They want us to wean her down slowly for a period of 3 days to 1 week to get her use to the ultra-thin consistency.

The speech therapist asked how long Danika was intubated when she was born. I told her "2 days" and she was amazed! She said Danika is a little rock star! She also suggested that we see a GI specialist because of how much Danika spits up/vomits. It's so hard to feed her.

As most of you know, her pulmonologist office called yesterday and said that she passed her respiratory test!!! She no longer has to be on oxygen!!!!! They said to keep a close eye on her and if she turns blue to take her to the emergency room.  This is all the stuff that Home Health came and picked up today!!!! Good riddance!!!!

 This is Danika asleep in her new crib! No more bassinet!!!

 This is Danika 30 min later! Awake! All over the place!!!