PT was just getting ready to do his evaluation so I watched while she did that. They just test reflexes and muscle tone. She did tell me he doesn’t have full range of motion in his neck to his left side so she showed me how to stretch his neck so we can work on that. She said to stretch him at every diaper change. She also pointed out that his head is starting to get flat on the right side so we need to make sure he is sleeping more on his left side. He always sleeps on his right side (probably because of his decreased range of motion to the left) and his little ear is always all crumpled up when he wakes up. So that’s something we need to pay close attention to and make sure it gets better. As long as he still has his soft spot on the top of his head his head shape can keep changing.
I asked the nurse if we should delay breastfeeding for a little longer since he had such a hard time with it yesterday and was so tired. She said she doesn’t think it was the breastfeeding itself that wore him out so much as it was the 8 bottles he took the day before. She thinks he’ll be a good breastfeeding baby and that we should continue with the one a day. She said we don’t want to wait too long to start introducing it again or he will get to used to how fast the milk flow is in a bottle and get frustrated with the slower milk flow at breast. So at her urging I decided to do it again today and see how he did. However we decided to limit him to just 15 minutes at the breast and then gavage the next feeding so that he could rest. I felt better about this plan and decided to at least give it another try today.
He took 24 mls – the most (by far) he has ever done at breast! He then took the rest by bottle. He had his 6 pm feeding gavaged and then took the bottle at 9 pm and midnight for Jamie. He also took his 3 am and 6 am bottles but was pretty tired the nurses said. He is still choking at least once a feeding usually which leads to a bradycardia. He can’t come home until he hasn’t had a brady for at least 5 days but I guess they don’t count bradys that happen while he’s eating. So the last brady he had, unrelated to feeding, was 12/28. So assuming he doesn’t have another brady and starts taking all his bottles he could come home on 1/3. But that’s all depending on the bottles really. His bradys are not a real concern because he doesn’t have them very often, but since we have slowed back down on the bottles I doubt we’ll be home that quick. Tate continues to gain weight but not as quickly as what he was before. He weighs 5 pounds, 11 ounces today. He has to average an ounce a day and he’s been gaining just a few grams the last few days, but hopefully he’ll start gaining more again since we are slowing back down. So everything has to balance out - the bradys, the bottles and the weight gain before we are going anywhere.
We had planned a special evening with Hudson as our last family of 3 outing for tonight but that didn’t end up happening. We were going to take him to the movies for the very first time but the movie started at 5 pm and Hudson didn’t wake up from his nap till 5:30. Jamie tried to get him up but he was not having it. So we cancelled those plans but, unfortunately, it looks like we'll still have another week or so for our last "family of 3" outing. Disappointing since just two days ago I thought we might be rooming in tonight. We ended up having a delicious dinner (prepared by my sister and mother) with my family. Then Jamie headed up to the hospital and Hudson and I went home to bed. I managed to stay awake long enough to send Jamie a text wishing him a happy new year at midnight and then I went to bed. So we didn’t do anything fun and fancy to ring in 2011 but we’ll have our “party” when Tate comes home.
1 comment:
that picture looks like a newborn, and just like Hudson!
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