The kids are doing great. Lucas gained some weight today, which is good because he had been stalling for the last week (mostly a much needed shedding of water weight in his lungs). He enjoyed a good time nursing with mom this morning. Though mom is still instructed to pump to empty before nursing him, he keeps finding a way to get himself some milk with persistent effort. Today, that meant that he had several spit ups because he still gets a full feed through his feeding tube, which meant he bit off more than he could chew, or had room for. Again, it just made me feel like one more step toward normalcy. My baby puked today, and I couldn't be happier.
Lucas continues to breath real well. Assuming he has another good night, the plan is to take down the flow level on his cannula tomorrow to almost the lowest setting. We'll then leave him there for the foreseeable future while we give him an opportunity to increase his p.o. feeds.
Olivia also put on some weight. Also excellent because she too had been stalling on her weight for the last week. She was shedding water weight from her lungs, and being on the iv since the infection scare didn't help either. But she's on the rise now. She is working her way back to full feeds, up to 15 mLs last night, 20 this morning, 25 (we hope) after evening rounds, and back to full feeds after morning rounds tomorrow. With each rise in breast milk, her iv nutrition is reduced. They have also discontinued her antibiotics; the thinking now is that she either had no infection, a very small one, or she's tough as nails. Okay, I added the last one. The hope now is that she will be on full feeds in the morning, and they will then be able to pull the iv line. You go girl.
I am also getting better at asking questions of the doctors. I finally learned to use my lawyerly skills and hedge the heck out of my question while asking it. You see, that way they don't waffle while answering, hedging themselves to make sure they don't promise me anything. So, today at the end of rounds, I said: Okay, so the best case scenario, assuming all goes according to plan, and of course I'm not holding you to anything, but best case scenario is that Olivia is on full feeds in the morning, the iv comes out, we wean her cpap to 4 tomorrow and then hopefully we can take her off the cpap on Monday or Tuesday? Um, yes Mr. Allen, best case scenario, that is the plan. Cool. (Footnote, Olivia has done nothing but improve with her breathing this week. Today, she spent the entire time satting in the upper 90s, and we realized this afternoon that she actually went the entire visit without desatting so much as once).
Armed with a beautiful morning with the kids, we set out to enjoy a beautiful spring-like day. There was not a cloud in the sky and the weather was almost in the mid-seventies. To celebrate the day--and mom's realization yesterday that sometimes just relaxing is ok--we accidentally ran a boatload of errands and loved it. We got the break light fixed on the car (someone accidentally backed it into a poll months ago when someone was dwp (driving while pregnant)). We enjoyed lunch outside at Eastern Market. And we then finished putting together the car seats, making sure they work with our hand-me-down snap n go (they do) and installing the bases in the car (don't worry moms, we'll have them inspected to confirm). One, very small, hitch with the car seats . . .
. . . um, yeah, our car extraordinaire has finally met its match. Looks like things will be a bit tight for the next year (or so). No worries. I'm planning to just sit in back with the kids:
The errand train continued, as we finally said our Mezuzah blessing and strongly affixed our Mezuzah on the door frame. It only took two years from when we moved into the house, but at least we got it done before the kids came home.
We rounded out the day with a wonderful dinner at our friends' house, with them and their three beautiful children. We've had many a great dinner since their first came almost four years ago. Our next dinner, with the four of us and our five kids, promises to be chaos and oh so much fun.
So there you have it. I have been taught to anticipate grace, especially through the hard times. We've had our fair share of challenges in the last seven weeks, three days, plus bed rest. Today, life once again turned the tables on us and brought us the kind of blessings that are easy to appreciate. I try to expect nothing less.
No comments:
Post a Comment