Sunday, November 16, 2008

A Busy Weekend

April & I had a very busy weekend, with the majority of our time spent trying to get the room in order for when Patrick & Savannah come home. In addition, to all the work we have been doing around the house, our cat Tyson decided to escape from the house last night and was missing in action for a few hours. Unfortunately, I was searching for him outside with a flashlight instead of updating this blog. In the end he did make it back to the front door and into the house.

In my last post, I hinted at some possible Kangaroo Care with April and Savannah but the doctors have advised us against that at this time. Kangaroo Care is basically, skin on skin contact with either April or myself and Patrick or Savannah for at least one continuous hour. This is very therapeutic and encouraged by the staff, however, the doctors want them both to be feeding more and to be stable for a while longer. We believe that this could happen with Savannah as soon as the end of this week.

The weekend's developments were good with both Patrick and Savannah. Patrick got his first taste of real food as they began to feed him 1 ML or (CC) of milk every 12 hours. He digested the milk fine so they increased his feedings to 1 ML every 6 hours as of 6:00 this evening. The process of getting him adjusted to food is going to be a very slow and deliberate process but it worked with Savannah and I am sure it will work with Patrick. We are just glad that after 10 days of IV nutrients, he is finally getting some food through his feeding tube. We hope that the milk will help him gain some weight as he is still around 800 grams (1 lb 12 ounces). His jaundice levels are still down where they should be and at this time there is nothing else to report.

Savannah made some major steps over the past 24 hours including the decrease of her jaundice levels which allowed the nurses to turn off the lights and remove her goggles. Today was the first day that April and I have really seen her entire face and she is more beautiful than we remember. I am sure that the goggles were not comfortable so we are glad that she does not have to wear them anymore. Of course, we do realize that her Jaundice levels could increase again but we hope they don't.

In regards to her feedings, Savannah is now up to 7.5 ML's per hour for a 3 hour period. They feed her for 3 hours and then take a 1 hour break and repeat this 6 times a day. The math equals 135 ML's per day which is a ton compared to what he brother receives every day. At this point she is still receiving milk and some other outside nutrients but they are slowly increasing the milk and decreasing the other nutrients at every feeding period. Savannah has really put on some weight over the past few days and is now at 1300 grams (2 lb 14 ounces). She could hit the 3 lb mark in the next few days. The other major item regarding Savannah is the Grade 1 bleed in the left side of her brain that was discovered last Monday. We hope to have the 2nd X-Ray completed on Monday or Tuesday to find out if the bleed resolved itself. Please say a prayer that this bleed is gone for good.

Finally, as predicted on Friday, my days of never changing a diaper have come to an end. After some strong encouragement from April and the nurse, I changed Savannah's diaper this afternoon. Considering that I had to put my hands through two little holes in the side of the incubator I think I did a decent job.

I can guarantee that this will be the first of many diapers that I change over the next 3-4 years

1 comment:

Pvtbenj said...

Patrick - Robert reminds me to this day that he changed the first diapers with our twins :o) Glad to hear the great updates! Hugs to you all!

~Jennie and famiy