It's been an exhausting few days, but in the larger scheme of things, there isn't much to report. Grandma and Grandpa Kenski continue to come over everyday and feed Henry. On Wednesday, I left a message for Dr. Hassan (GI specialist) because he indicated on Tuesday night that he wanted to know what the ER physicians had to say. Dr. Hassan called back. I told him that Henry was switched to Neocate for fortification. He said that was the best choice at this point. He also thought that we should only be fortifying Henry's bottles twice per day. When we left the NICU, the staff said to fortify a minimum of two bottles per day, but we could fortify every feed not directly taken from the breast. Jeff and I were a little concerned about going down to only two fortifications per day because Henry's growth, while increasing, hasn't broken any records. We'd like to see him gain 30 grams per day, and he's been under that. Decreasing fortifications means decreasing calories which means slowing the weight gain process. Henry had at least one stool with blood in it, but nothing compared to Tuesday night.
This morning (Thursday), we started our day off with a visit to Dr. Bianchi's office. Henry's head circumference was measured at 34 cm. His length was 17.75 inches. And he weighed 5 lbs 10 ozs. That's a 6 oz increase from last week. Talked with Dr. Bianchi about our fortification concerns. He said he'd call Dr. Hassan to discuss the matter and get back to us. He called us later in the day to say that we could fortify all of Henry's feeds.
Someone from Dr. Bianchi's office called me to say that Henry needed to have a genetic screening done 3-4 months since his last blood transfusion. Apparently, they received a letter saying that the screening done on Henry's blood after he was born was done after a blood transfusion, meaning that the results were inconclusive because blood transfusions often yield false negatives. They wanted to know off hand when his last transfusion was. I suggested that they look at the records from UMC. The woman on the telephone seemed to not want to research it. I'm pretty sure that his last transfusion was in mid-June, but I am perplexed that they would rely on parent memories from a stressful time a few months back rather than going to the written records. It is frustrating to think that we thought he was in the clear on the genetic screens and that this may be a false negative. But we have enough to worry about with his feedings, so I'm mentally shelving the genetic screen concern for now.
Henry spent the afternoon vomiting up feeds, while my mom held him. He did a nice projectile emesis on me as well at one point. "Emesis" is one of our NICU vocabulary words. The vomiting has since subsided to mere spit up episodes this evening.
Henry had a pretty good nap on me early this evening and a good nap on Jeff later in the evening. It's nice when he actually sleeps for 45 minutes straight because that's pretty much a record for him. All in all, he rarely sleeps and feeds every 1.5 hours at a slow pace.
Jeff bought a baby scale via Amazon that arrived yesterday. We tried it out this evening. It had Henry's weight at 5 lbs 9.5 ozs. Pretty close to the scale in Dr. Bianchi's office.
Henry had a diaper tonight that had flecks of blood, but it wasn't that bad. We're hoping that the blood goes away in the next week, now that he's off the Isomil, and I'm eating very little soy (just the occasional piece of tofu). My diet is a bit of a challenge. Added to my already restricted vegetarian diet (no meat, chicken, or fish), I'm avoiding dairy (including any product that lists casein or whey in the ingredients), soy products, coffee, chocolate, and peanuts. Doing a bit of research that mentions caffeine creating fussy babies. I have also heard that peanuts are on the common allergy list, so peanuts are out the window too.
That's all for now.
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