Henry's Hideout

The big news of today is that Henry moved. He was in the second pod near the window. However, the sink there broke, and the repair was going to possibly involve ripping it out of the wall. They were going to keep Henry near the work but his grandpa Hank stepped in. I don't know if he turned on the charm (a wink and a smile from the "Silver Fox"), or resorted to his mastery of political communication before which a person with a mere bachelor's degree was powerless to refuse, or if he just slipped them a twenty, but he convinced the nurses to move him to the fourth pod to avoid the noise of the repairs.

He now has the best seat in the house. The fourth pod only holds four babies at the most. It is the farthest from the front desk where nurses and doctors gather to chat. It is the quietest place he could be and also has more room than his old spot. The screen saver for the computer at his station has been changed to "Henry's Hideout" instead of "Henry's House." It seems appropriate for the nice secluded location he now has.

Hopefully he will be able to stay there. They are trying to work out the nurses schedule to make that possible because they need to have the right number of nurses in the right location. Moving babies from pod to pod also requires shifting nurses around. They have been responsive to our requests in the past and I think they will accommodate us on this one as well.

In other news, Henry now weighs 1050 grams (2lbs 3 oz). They are starting him on breast milk again. He is getting 1 ml every hour in a continous feed. We've been told for several days that they would probably let his gut rest a while after he was off the antibiotics. So sure enough they started the feeds the day after he finished his antibiotics. This time I don't think Kate and I were suprised by the rush to put him back on breast milk. It seems that frequently we are told one thing and then another happens. So we start his third attempt to go on breast milk. Hopefully, the third time is the charm.

We were able to talk to Dr. Wispe this afternoon. He is the head of the unit and is taking over Henry's case in Dr. Cahan's absence. He is eager to get Henry on the breast milk because he needs the calcium. The diuretic lasix tends to take calcium away from the body. That is why he is now on it once every other day rather than every day. They tried another diuretic called diurel (sp?) but he said that it made his sodium level drop too low. So they will be watching him closely for signs of feeding intolerance and nec. They will be proceeding slowing but they are moving forwarding with the breast milk.

I was able to hold Henry for a little under two hours today. He seems to be coming close to sucking his thumb. He gets the knuckle in and sort of chews on it. He was very calm most of the time and his vitals were very good. Kate is going to hold him tonight.

Mary was his nurse during the day. She has been great the last couple of days making sure that the one recliner is available when we want to use it. We don't mind other people using it, but if they aren't going to recline then there are plenty of other chairs.

Today was his 7 week birthday. He could also be considered a 32 week old or a negative 8 week old. One more week and he will be as old as Kate was when she was born.

I'm continually suprised at the will he shows. I think that if I went from the nice warm comfy paradise of the womb where I spent most of the day sleeping and had all my needs taken care of to a place where I was continually poked, proded, injected, manhandled, xrayed, intubated, suctioned, wiped, taped and untaped, and had to do things like breath, digest and have my diaper changed I might just say, no thanks, this isn't what I signed up for. Just ask Kate, I'm an intolerable grump if I get disturbed during a nap. He just seems to take it in stride with only the occasional furrowed brow.

Thanks to all of you out there hoping and praying for him. You have helped him make it this far. There is a long way to go but he continues to give every indication that he has the spirit to make it. That spirit is being nurtured by all the positive thoughts from all the people connected to him through various channels. You don't realize how many people you have in your corner until something like this, and we are thankful for it.