New Digs

Yesterday we did end up moving up to the 8th floor Progressive Care Unit.  It is a pretty decent change as Angie and I are meant to transition to more of the care.  They also do a lot of training for the parents on how to care for the children.  We've been paying attention, so it hasn't been a huge learning curve.

I spent the night with him last night and he slept well, luckily for me.  I did his 12 AM and 6 AM feed and the nurse did the 3 AM feed so that I could sleep :).

Jacob still has his chest tube in, they are still watching the output of the tube to make a determination on the chylothorax.  We are now supplementing the breastmilk he is getting with additional formula (was normal formula, now it is a special formula to help with the chylothorax) to increase the calories to make him big and fat!  In the next day or so, they'll remove the chest tube, so we'll have a little less to maneuver around with.

We also have a speech therapist who is helping with his feeding (bottle).  Believe it or not, even though he was feeding ok by bottle before his surgery, due to being intubated, his muscles lose their strength and make feeding tough.  He sucks the bottle well, but his swallowing isn't quite meshed with it.  It was really surprising to me, but it is very common to have feeding issues; I was just confident that wouldn't be the case!  In the meantime, we are feeding him via NG tube (a tiny tube that goes through his nose and down his throat into his stomach).

We also have a occupational therapist who comes by a few times a week to help with some developmental things.  Things as small as how he grips his thumb in his hand can be something we will work with him on.  Nothing too major though, just need to do a few things to catch him back up with the other babies!

Today he is struggling a bit with his feeds as we've changed him over to a formula to help with the chlye and his tummy doesn't doesn't seem to like it too much.  We are going to try to ease him into it in the hopes that it will work!

We also got a checklist of things we have to do before he can go home now, so we have a new goal to work on!