Quiet Please!

Today Henry is doing well. He has gained a significant amount of weight and is up to 830 grams. However, much of that may be water. He was started on a diurectic today and had a very soggy diaper afterwards. His day nurse Sarah thought it was impressive. Overall he didn't look too puffy except for one hand. The hand that has his pic line looked like Popeye post spinach. They cut a slit in the bandage that was going around his arm holding in the pic line so it wouldn't go completely around the arm and elevated the arm. A call to the NICU a few minutes ago told us that the swelling has gone down greatly after that.

The NICU was fairly quiet today and he seemed to be pretty comfortable. He had a couple spells of not breathing accompanied by a drop in the heart rate. As Kate has said before, these are common. One was right after being given his milk for the afternoon feeding (up to 3ml's). The nurse commented that after feeding these spells are particularly common because the baby is very warm inside and out and becomes very relaxed.

Yesterday was a bit rough. He generally seemed unhappy most of the time and the noise level in the NICU was fairly high. His heart rate and oxygen levels were going up and down, known as surfing. Both Kate and I had the frustrating experience of trying to calm him with our touch and having him stop breathing. Nothing better for the old self confidence than feeling that if you touch your baby you might kill him. I figure he will grow up to have big keep out signs on his room and padlocks locks like a NY apartment.

To add to the frustration of feeling helpless to comfort our boy is the continued battle to keep the NICU quiet. We've posted a picture of him on his isolet with a balloon coming out of mouth saying "Quiet Please!". We talk to every nurse we have to express our concern about noise levels. We give the occassional concerned look toward the current offenders. Hopefully it will make a difference. We're going to be there a while, maybe we will have them all trained by the time we leave.