Penny was his nurse yesterday morning, Kathy was his nurse at night. Today Nancy took care of him in the morning, and Cindy cared for him in the evening. They have all taken care of him several times. Nothing really remarkable happened that didn't involve poop. For Nancy he managed to poop on two new diapers while she was changing him forcing her to do three diaper changes in one turn. Then for Cindy he had such copious amounts that he suffered what they term a "blow out," where it comes out the side of the diaper. Strange the things I find entertaining these days.
Grandpa Henry was able to hold him for an hour both yesterday and today. Grandma took a shift yesterday mid morning to afternoon while Kate did some work, and I shopped for cribs. I took over around 1:30pm until the shift change. He seemed a bit restless for both myself and Grandma yesterday.
Last night, Kate and I returned in the evening after shift change. We got to chat with Moe Kane, one of the nurse practitioners. She saw Kate reading the latest Harry Potter book and said that there were at least 3 copies in the NICU that evening.
Sunday nights are the nights that he gets measured. His head circumference grew .5cm to 30.5. That is an acceptable amount of growth. He had a couple big weeks before that so it isn't surprising that he slowed down a bit. Anywhere from .5 to 1 is normal. His length was 39cm which was actually down 1cm. I seriously doubt he shrunk, so I'm guessing there is a significant margin of error. They also tested his hematocrit level which was 26.5. This was up 1.5 from last week. This shows he is still severely anemic but is an improvement over the 25 of the last 2 weeks. Hopefully, it will start to climb at a faster rate, and he can get some color back. He has been very pale for a long time.
Today they changed his feeding schedule to be over a half hour instead of an hour. He seems to be tolerating it fairly well. He has had increasing bouts of reflux which tend to cause him to stop breathing, then his heart rate drops and his oxygen levels drop. Nice little moments of panic to keep things lively. We haven't actually seen him spit up anything. If he continues to suffer from reflux issues, they may move him to a crib that has a special sling to prop his head up more. They can also write a prescription for anti reflux medicine.
Kate was able to breast feed him for about 20 minutes today. He managed to do this without choking which is really nice. We've found there is fine line between providing life giving sustenance and having the heart stop.
The last two nights we have done the kangaroo care (aka skin to skin). Kate did it last night, and I did it tonight. We hadn't been doing it because he had stopped tolerating it a couple weeks ago and seemed to only want to be held wrapped in blankets on his back. I thought he had become too much of a big boy to enjoy it anymore. However, both last night and tonight he took to it just like the old days, oxygen saturation near 100% and sleeping for long periods of time. I'm glad that he has let us do this again because it is rather enjoyable. It
makes me feel like I'm actively helping him rather than just being a cheerleader on the sidelines. It is best not to picture me in a skirt with pom poms, from experience I don't make a pretty woman, see exhibit A. This is a picture of myself, my best friend Tony and his then girlfriend Mary from circa 1990. Yes we went out in public like this, on Halloween. Tony actually flirted with a guy in the mini mart. If only I had gone for the bigger chest and could find some size 13 heels I might have had a chance. Just a little random something to break of the monotony of all those sickeningly cute baby pictures we keep posting over and over again. Hopefully it won't cause any of you psychological damage.
2 comments:
On a side note, last night when I was doing kangaroo care with Henry and Jeff was dozing off in the chair next to us, we overheard one of the nurses say that a screaming baby (in pod two, I think) sounded like a pterodactyl. Jeff and I thought it was so odd that someone else made a similar observation to the one we made earlier. I actually thought that particular baby sounded more like a screeching cat. Some of the baby yells are rather distinct.
I think that it was Kathy who mentioned that they may move some of the screamers to pod three because pod three has been relatively quiet, and it is hard on the nurses to be assigned to more than one screamer at a time. In short, they want to spread around the high volume babies. Frankly, I think that if there is more than one problem baby, then they should open up pod four and stick them together. Mind you, if I was a nurse, I would find the assignment dreadful. On the other hand, it would be better for the patients in the NICU.
We are still pretty content with the isolation room. As I've said before, it isn't perfect. The doors have to be left open when we aren't there, so that the nurses can hear Henry's alarms go off. During the day and a good part of the evening, we (or one of my parents) is there, letting us close the sliding glass doors and giving Henry some relative quiet, which is great.
That picture of Jeff in the dress is gorgeous. I especially like the red bow in the hair and eighties blouse.
Sorry I haven't been around, but I got sick in Hawaii last week and am still recovering. I just wanted to wish Jeff a Happy Birthday!
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