4lbs 8 ozs
Well here I am again. I know you all probably thought I fell off the face of the earth especially if you read this without using facebook. Since Monday May 2 Holly and I have been at the hospital staying the night so that Holly could breast feed Calen every 3 hours. Today is Thursday and we will be leaving this afternoon back home. Calen didn't really progress much in terms of feeding's, he still needs lots of practice before he will be able to actually breast feed on his own, we will probably be starting him on bottles today or tonight, so that way the nurses will be able to feed him when we are not there. We are hoping he takes to a bottle better than breast so that he will be ready to go home, he won't be able to go home with a tube down his nose for food, so that will have to improve. Since my last post I see that there has been a large weight increase. Amazing how fast he can gain weight, so he will probably be around 5 lbs when he does get released from the hospital.
So we have had just a fabulous time living in the family sleep room. Holly never left here 1 time since Monday so I feel bad for her. I didn't get here until really late Monday because I worked and then Wednesday I had senior pictures, so I had some breaks from the hospital air. There has been the benefit that we really know our way around Miami Valley, we have had lots of time to explore this place, like when you get hungry or were really feeling the need for some coffee. For some odd reason getting up every 3 hours here and if you have to do it at home are much different, like we were extremely tired, more so last night than any other night. The feeding times were very strict, we had to feed him at 3,6,9,12 around the clock. We had to go in and get his assessment done, then Holly attempted to breast feed from 10-20 minutes, then we had to gavage feed him through his tube, another 20 minutes, then Holly had to pump, another 20 minutes, cleanup and head back to the room for some sleep for maybe 2 hours if your lucky. Pretty much no fun, makes me wonder how I made it through the Army. On Wednesday night though we had a great nurse who said since Calen was not really breast feeding well that we could take a break and not come in from midnight to 6 am so we got some pretty straight sleep, felt great.
Today, Thursday May 5, 2011 Stephanie our nurse felt that Calen needed to make some more progress so she talked the doctors into taking him off high flow oxygen. So they have moved him down to a standard nasal cannula at 1.5L of oxygen. He could go home on this. He is tolerating it just fine right now. Give him a day or so to ensure he has made the transition ok and hopefully we don't have to worry about that anymore, his room is really starting to look empty.
Well now it is May 6, 2011 and we are back visiting Calen right now. Today was the first day that Calen attempted to drink from a bottle with his nurse and he did amazing. His volume is 35 ml per feeding and drank a good 25 ml of that out of the bottle. This is a really positive accomplishment. As long as he is able to drink from a bottle consistently then they will be able to pull his nasogastric tube out and that means we will be that much closer to home. A common question of oxygen at home still remains and it appears more and more that it will be the case, they said that being on oxygen will not keep him here, only the feeding issues will, so as long as he still progresses with feeding then homeward bound is within eye sight.
I will make some attempts of keeping the blog going strong till the end, I just cannot beleive how much stuff there is to do. I am back doing pictures regularly now which is a huge time consumer, I have not mowed my lawn 1 time this season because I have a flat tire and cannot seem to get the tire off the mower to get it fixed, our roof, specifically over our bed was leaking due to all the rain and it is in need of repair, I had a flat tire on the car about a week ago, got brand new tires placed on the car to 4 days later (last night) end up with a nail in one of them and it go flat, and Calen's room still needs to be finished, and we really need to steam clean the carpets before he comes home because I have stirred up so much dust in the house working on it, it's like wow, how much craziness at one time can we have.
We are all together ok though, holding it all together very well. Please keep us in continued prayer as we near the end of this and could be dealing with this all much harder at home than we do here. Goodnight!!
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