Today the doctors put me on “ad-lib feed”. That means I can eat whenever I want. I just have to cry for Mommy or Daddy to feed me.
Mommy is trying to teach me to breast feed, but that’s hard. I think she’s going to keep on trying though. So maybe I’ll just give in and make her happy.
If I gain weight, the doctors will send me home. Mommy says my room at home is “the bomb”. That sounds fun.
So yesterday, Isaac had his swallow test (technically a barium swallow). We’re told he drank the chalky goo down quickly and no leaks showed up on the x-rays.
We were then able to feed Ice Man a bit (15ml) of pedialyte every 3 hours. Shortly after his first bottle, he exploded with a humongous green poo.
This morning we were able to give him mother’s milk, and he’s having that every 3 hours now. You can tell he likes it much better, and falls asleep with a full belly.
He is not having any problems eating. He takes the bottle well (we’re using a slow-flow nipple in preparation for breastfeeding later). He sometimes has hiccups after eating, but not so much lately.
They also took his “chest tube” out today (which had drained fluid from his operation earlier, but hasn’t been doing much lately)… so we’re able to hold him. Isaac likes to be held. And we love holding him… even when he audibly poos in Mom’s arms. She is so calming!
Everything is going well. I think we could take him home now and take care of him as if we had gone home from birth with no problems (that’s just my opinion, not backed up by any doctors). We’re going to do our routine here for another couple weeks to make sure he’s in tip top shape and the surgery heals well.
Actually, the main thing we need to do is ween him off of all the comforts of the hospital and onto the comforts of home.
Now that he’s eating and being held, he doesn’t understand why that can’t happen whenever he wants. They’ve turned down his IV, so he’ll be feeling hunger in a different way (before he had an empty stomach, now he’ll have an empty stomach and low blood sugar, etc, like anyone else not on an IV).
With the chest tube out, he doesn’t need the comfy rolled up towels that were keeping him from rolling around. Those aren’t good to have in a crib unless you have a heart rate monitor on your baby. Kim talked me out of getting one for home. So he’ll have to learn how to sleep without pillows.
Thanks to the Ronald McDonald house, Kim and I are close enough to come over to see Isaac whenever we need to. We’re taking turns and trying to be there whenever he is eating or awake… just like at home.
We’ll keep you posted.
Last night was an exciting one for Isaac. They moved him into a crib. (His old bed was the standard open-top NICU issue with a heat lamp.)
Because he is not under a heat lamp, he can wear clothes now. He loves being wrapped in blankets (like any baby). Though he still likes to have his hands out up top to rub on his face.
We can also put lotion on his skin, which can get dried out from all of the bandages they put on him (mostly to hold monitor wires).
They even gave him a couple of toys: a duck and horse attached to pacifiers. He loves them. We just sit the little animal up on his chest, with the paci within sucking range. He’s already very good at holding pacifiers in his mouth with his hands.
We bought him a mobile for his crib. It’s a Fisher Price jungle-themed one that plays some catchy Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart numbers. This is cool because we’ll take the mobile home with us, and it can help in the hospital-to-home transition.
I’ll try to get some more recent pictures up (listen to me – “more recent” – he’s five days old! – Kim already made an album with 100+ pictures in it). If you are not used to the wires, the pictures could look scarier than they are. So I’ll try to put a “wires and tubes primer” up first. This is important, cause a major measure of progress is the number of wires and tube around his crib. 
Isaac has a big test on Monday. So we’re going to cram all weekend and focus on getting his rest. If all goes well, he’ll be able to ditch the two remaining tubes… leaving just the bare minimum wires for monitoring heartrate, respirations, and blood-oxygen levels. A tubeless baby is also a baby we can hold, so we’re excited about that.
I was born today on November 16th at 2:33 in the morning. I weighed 6 pounds and 0.8 ounces. I was 20 and 1/2 inches long. I was completely adorable.
Thank you, Mommy.
