NICU update

Ok at this point I want to give an update on where he is and how he is doing. As everyone knows, he is still in the NICU (neonatal icu). It feels like they are generally trying to come up with excuses to keep him, so annoying. Of course, we’d rather they be safe. But at first when he came out he was a little “dusky or blue”, meaning a bit of trouble breathing. So, they put him on oxygen, then slowly weaned him off as his saturation scores stayed at 99-100%. He was off that by 7pm that first night. The next step was testing him without the heat lamps to see if he could maintain temperature control. He did that just fine too. After that they noticed a blood sugar level reading that they weren’t entirely happy with, so they wanted to keep him to observe for a while longer. That has not come up again. As of yesterday morning, he wasn’t eating as much as they wanted him to (they want 60cc’s (2oz)), and he was only doing 25. So they had a feeding specialist come in, she tried out a few diff nipples and found one that worked. Immediately after she was done, he had the biggest blowout. His first. I know I’m supposed to be proud and not grossed out. I remember bill cosby saying “ooh my little baby went poo poo”. Well, I am proud. But I am also grossed out. While they were changing his diaper and the nurse was showing me how (I’ve made it this far in life without doing it), she was explaining how she always covers him with the new diaper to prevent, uh, sprayage. And as she’s talking he does it! Sprays Michelle, literally sitting 10 feet away in her wheelchair! She flinches and starts laughing which hurts her stitched up stomach terribly. It was a pretty funny scene.

Anyway, they are now going up 5cc’s every other feeding and have him at about 50 cc’s. They say if he stays on this trajectory, he should be moved to the regular nursery first thing tomorrow morning, and then down with us after they check him out there. We are still on track to go home (with him) Friday at 10am.