Busy day today...thanks to my Doctrine co-workers for throwing me a baby shower/luncheon at Johnny Carino's. I'll go out to eat anytime, just give me a call!
We drove up to Tucson around 2:30pm...getting there sometime after 4pm. Evan is off the bililights (yea)! The nurses say the jaundice could come back, so no need to worry if we visit another day and he's back under the light. Now we could sort of see his face without the eye covers on. His eyes (and face in general) are swollen from water retention.
From the picture you can see that Evan does have a little inkling of a chin cleft (or "chin-butt" as we call it), indicating that he is indeed momma's boy! Score one for mom! His hair is still a mess since he hasn't has a bath yet, so we can't really tell what his hair color is.
He is still on the oscillating ventilator which is giving him 500 breaths per minute, but they have reduced the amplitude settings (meaning, the breaths aren't as forceful). We got to speak with one of the resident doctors and she said they hope to start feeding him through a gavage (instead of the umbilical cord) maybe Friday. What they will do is test him to see if he will tolerate being fed through the gavage (feeding tube through the nose down into the stomach) and increase the amount given to him. If he doesn't tolerate it (if he is showing too much bile in his system), they'll put him back on the umbilical cord IV feed line.
His CO2 levels are still coming down (I think they were in the 40's), which is good. They took another chest x-ray and it is slowly getting clearer. They are still trying to determine what caused the Tuesday episode by doing a culture of some lung fluid. In the lab, they'll work with it to see if any viral or bacterial stuff appears. It takes a few days to do it, so no results yet. With all the people in and out of the NICU and different people handling the babies, it's a wonder more babies don't catch a little bug.
His red blood cell counts are going up, so he didn't have to have any blood transfusions. While we were there, we got to see the nurse do the fun job of flipping him from his belly to his back and rotating him (his bed is slightly slanted so he needed to be upright). It took a team of 3 people all having to pitch in and help since he is a tangle of IV lines and his respirator tubes. His poor little head is all misshapen since he has to keep his head turned to the side for the ventilator. You can sort of see in the picture (that was after they flipped and rotated him) that the side of his head is flat.
So, overall, it was a good day...no major bump in the road.
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Chronological age: 0 months 0 weeks 6 days
Adjusted/Gestastional age: 31 5/7 weeks
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UMC Charges: $$8,176.30
Running Total: $94,263.14
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1 comment:
Hey sugar,
Glad things continue to get better...and also glad we have another memeber of the "Chin-butt" brigade. Let us know if you need anything. Love you guys.
Joe and Deb
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