NICU, Day 4

Quick recap from yesterday (Saturday)....

• Overnight on Friday, Silas was able to spend the whole night off any breathing assistance. First thing Saturday morning, they put a less invasive breathing assistance in his nose to give him minimal help.  His bilirubin level was up slightly overnight, but Dr. Bzdega is not thinking he's at the point yet that he needs any photo light therapy.  He also got to eat real food today. He is not taking it from a bottle, they are doing it through a feeding tube of sorts, gavage feeding is what they call it. The bummer thing today has been his IV sites. We went through 5 IV sites today, started in his arm, then to one foot and then the other foot and then (this is gross), to his scalp, and then the other side of his scalp. If that doesn't make your skin just crawl, you should probably consider a career in medicine. They're considering putting in a PIC line, which is a deeper set vein catheter, but presents more of an infection risk. Poor kid got his veins from his mother. 
• Owen had a pretty restless night on Friday --> Saturday morning. With the new feeding tube, he just did not rest well, and the nurse attending him was not the most understanding, so I spent an hour overnight holding him and gave him his 3am feeding.  He is starting to take feedings better, just not quite at the rate that they would like.  His bilirubin level is down, so we're making progress there.  Originally, we were thinking that he would have his "little man surgery" tonight, but the doctor who does them had many other "surgeries" to perform last night. 

We had a nice day to kind of relax, and have a few visitors. We didn't have too many visitors, but they all came at the same time, so it felt more busy than it really was.  Saturday evening we decided to get outta dodge for a couple of hours, and take Hayden and get some dinner and make a Target run.  It was nice to get out for a little while and breathe real air again.  I do have to say, I was pretty wiped out from walking around Target.  

When we got back from Target, our nurse updated us on a couple of things with Owen. He had some 'risidual' left from his 6pm feeding, about 1/3 of the feeding was still in his stomach, so she had to report it to the neonatologist.  It did turn out that it wasn't a problem, but he does need to continue to make progress with his eating.  

The to top off the day, we left the hospital and got a real nights' sleep at Jesse's grandma's house in Ankeny. It was soo nice to sleep in a real bed, even though we didn't really sleep in, per se.