Last night was a good night. Kathy was his evening nurse. She and Jeff changed a diaper weighing 42 grams...rather impressive considering that he hasn't been on Lasix in a couple days. Jeff did some kangarooing with Henry. I called to check in on them and talked with Kathy. She received the lab results and his reticulation count was high (retic count of 4), meaning that his body has begun to produce red blood cells on his own. Consequently, he won't be getting the blood transfusion. But they will continue to monitor his hematocrit levels...just to make sure that his hematocrit levels don't get too much lower. The big news of the evening was that Henry gained another 50 grams (post-42 gram diaper). He weighed 1450 grams (3 lbs 3 oz).Today, his primary Lisa G. was on duty. She'll be leaving soon to take another job in administration, so he'll get a new primary(ies). I am hoping that they are Joyce, Kathy, and Holly (who are currently associates, meaning that they won't get Henry if one of his primaries is on duty).
According to Lisa, Henry had a quiet morning. She checked his hematocrit levels, and they were 29 and 30, which is much better than 23.5. I changed Henry's diaper and did skin-to-skin with him for a couple hours around noon. He was pretty relaxed during the kangaroo session, which was good because it was rather noisy in the room. The mother of the baby next to Henry only speaks Spanish. So the lactation consultant had to translate a lengthy conversation between her and Lisa. I don't know why translators have to speak at a loud conversational level. There are signs around the NICU that say that babies can't sleep well when exposed to more than 55 decibels of sound. The average conversation is 60 decibels. Hence, you need to speak in a quiet voice when in the NICU. This is the third translator who has been loud, loud, loud in the past week. I finally asked Lisa to ask them to speak quietly. I had been holding a fleece blanket over Henry's ear for most of the conversation and was getting a bit tired of trying to balance (with one hand) holding the blanket over his ear, getting him to nuzzle, and holding the cannula tubes in his nose (the tape was coming undone on the tubes). The other hand was supporting Henry's body.
Henry didn't like being put back in his isolette. He kicked up a fuss and kept desating. To make a long story short, he went through three diapers in 10 minutes. It looks like he is digesting food well. Lisa suspects that he will not have put on weight when he is weighed tonight, given his output.
My mom came around 3PM. Henry's isolette was really warm. The temp probes were screwed up again. So we spent the better part of 2 hours trying to make sure that he didn't get too hot. The temp probe is a wire that hooks into the isolette on one end and attaches to the baby under a little duck sticker at the other end. This morning, Lisa reported that the temp probe temperature matched the hand held thermometer that is used under his arm. When I took his temperature before skin-to-skin, it was 0.7 degrees Celsius off. He was fine with the hand held thermometer, so things were OK. When we put him back into the isolette, the temp probe was about 1 degree off, which was frustrating. The isolette adjusts the temperature inside the isolette based on what the temp probe says. So when the temp probe doesn't work correctly, it really screws things up. Today, it made his isolette feel like a sauna.
Henry was fine when I left around 5PM. My mom stayed to watch over the temperature situation.
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