Pediatrician Found

I spent last night at the hospital. Jeff stayed until 4AM. I left around 7:45AM. The nursing went well. I discussed bottle feeding with Holly and Joyce. As much as I would have loved to see Henry take his first bottle, I asked them to bottle feed Henry if he got hungry while I was gone. I really don't want to see another NG tube in Henry's nose if it can be avoided.

I returned to the hospital at 10:15AM. My dad was holding Henry. In my absence, Joyce had given Henry his first bottle! He took 33 mls. My dad held Henry for well over two hours.

Jeff picked me up at 11AM. We went to Catalina Pediatrics to meet with Dr. Sosan Moussa. She was great. When we left the meeting, Jeff said, "Shall I assume that we've met our pediatrician?" She felt like a good fit for Henry's (and our) needs. Not only does she currently have a couple children who were 24-weekers under her care (the kids are now six year olds from different families), but she also had 33-week twins (one of whom was very, very small). So she knows the problems with extremely low birth weight children from both a clinical and parental standpoint. She spent a while with us. The meeting wasn't rushed, which was nice.

We went back to spend time with Henry in the afternoon. Henry had had a 40 ml bottle at while we were at Moussa's office. Later in the day, Henry had a brady for Kathy.

The tone of the NICU has gone from very busy to super crazy busy. A new baby moved into the slot right outside Henry's room last night. I'm no neonatalogist, but it looks like he or she has gestational diabetes. The baby was born at 10 lbs. Today, there were two more new admits to Pod Three. And, the commotion in Pod Three is extraordinary. Looks like one of the new admits is full-term and one is very small. All three of the admits from yesterday and today are on warming tables, which take a fair amount of room. It was so crazy in Pod Three earlier today that it almost felt like being in Pod One (the room for the very, very sick babies).

Jeff left at 5:45PM to go and take care of the dogs. My mom and sister Carolyn visited in the late afternoon. Henry was upset right before shift change. Kathy helped me settle him down, so that I could have dinner with my family at Lovin' Spoonfuls. Carolyn is leaving for Washington in the morning, so it was the last time I'll see her until Thanksgiving. Henry was still fussy before I left for dinner, but I knew that Kathy would make sure that he was fine. Kathy, Joyce, and Holly are going on vacation. Joyce will be back Sunday. Kathy is on-call on Saturday, but I suspect that she's hoping that she can actually have some R&R.

After dinner, Jeff and I went back to the NICU. Kathy weighed him at 1910 grams (a 20 gram loss from the previous night). Henry was asleep despite the commotion in Pod Three right outside the isolation room. Then, a person came to do Henry's hearing test. By this time, he was waking up. He has to be asleep for the test to take place. Long story short, she was unable to give him the test because he was awake and upset. I tried to nursing him after but he was way too upset to nurse. Because I had only had about 45 minutes sleep in the past 24 hours, Jeff sent me home. He is with Henry now.