Henry's New Clothes

The good news first, Henry got to wear his first shirt today. It was a bit big for him but it was kind of cute. Of course he spit up on it within about 10 minutes and Janice had to take it off. He's back to just the tiny little diaper.

I don't know why I found that so exciting. Probably the commercial society we live in pressuring me toward conspicuous consumption in an attempt purchase approval from others as well as my child. Hello, Baby Gap, I'd like to find a shirt that has long sleeves and provokes feelings of envy from other parents as well as shoes that have good arch support while simultaneously evoking feelings of joy from my child that I can misinterpret as love.

Now for the not so good news. The plans for the week Kate mentioned in the previous post look to be on hold. Tonight Henry went backward a little bit. He had green colored residual in his stomach from his previous feeding which isn't good. His color looked mottled, at least that is what I'm told. For some reason I just can't see it.

Dr. Cahan and Moe Kane both took a look at him. Dr. Cahan ordered an xray of his stomach and intestines as well as several different blood tests. The xray showed a lot of air in his intestines. There was no air in the walls of the intestines which was good. Air inside the walls of the intestines is one of the signs of NEC (Necrotizing Endo Colitis, sp?) which is very bad and one of the things they are constantly checking for.

Apparently air in the intestines is not uncommon for babies on the cpap because it is forcing air down their throat which can go down the wrong way. Kate just called and the results of the blood tests don't show any major problems. Dr. Cahan has ordered the feeding to resume in the morning. Hopefully the air will be gone by then.

My theory is that this is the result of his feeding tube. A few days ago Gene had taped it to his upper lip and had it coming straight into the mouth. He explained that this way it goes down the throat in a way that doesn't make as much contact and causes less irritation. This morning they removed Gene's tube job and replaced it with the typical taped to the side of the face style. Henry pulled the tube out several times today. Every time I saw him he was trying to work it out with his tongue. I believe the attempts to work it out with his tongue are causing him to swallow even more air than normal. Maybe I'll fly this up the flag pole tomorrow.

The nicu seemed rather chaotic tonight. His nurse was Kim and she seemed to be overwhelmed so Jenny, who took care of him before, helped out a lot. Henry was very active and his cpap was not sitting well tonight so he required a lot of attention to try to get it on right. By the time we left he was steady but they had turned up his oxygen to 40. His reported weight was 840 grams. That is up 30 from yesterday. I'm kind of suspect of this number because that is a rather big gain. We'll see what they say tomorrow.