So, after all of the changes this week, today was surprisingly status quo. All was pretty much the same as it had been. Spencer is getting stronger and they have been steadily weaning his augmented air down. When they can get the flow down to a certain level (2 liters/min) then they'll switch him from the high-flow cannula down to a regular cannula. And when he's on the regular cannula, they may be able to start trying to bottle feed him formula. He's down to about 3 liters/min, which is great. It's so amazing how different he is since the surfactant procedure. Although he's still a squirmy baby, he's much more calmer and even tempered. Very little upsets him now. He's also quite actively sucking on the pacifier when offered, so we're hopeful this translates to him actually eating well when he gets to the bottle, but we've been warned that that doesn't necessarily translate.
Dexter still has not been eating well on his own and the doctor's have changed his schedule to try to help him out. One thought is that since he is still a premature baby, he may be exhausting himself trying to suckle. So, they have no moved to only trying to bottle feeding him orally every other visit (every 6 hours) and in between, to just automatically feed him through the nasal feeding tube. We've also cut down our "touch time" visits to those visits when he's feeding orally. This is an attempt to keep him calmer and quieter and encourage him to rest and conserve his strength more between visits. So, now we visit at 12:30, 6:30 and 12:30. Because of this, we were encouraged to get out and enjoy the sunshine during the afternoon. So at the time when we would have gone to Dexter's mid-afternoon feeding/touch time, we went out and took a walk. The "lake" had drained and we walked down to see how the businesses were doing in the area that was under water. They actually didn't look in too bad shape and had reopened for business.
After we had our 6:30 feeding/touch time Dexter, and then 8:00 pm touch time visit with Spencer, we had to get back to taking care or ourselves. When we had packed "just in case" a couple of weeks beforehand, we had packed for a week. Well, we were going to be here for more than a week, so we had to go out and do some laundry. So we found a laundromat near the local Wal-mart. It also turns out that the hospital cafeteria doesn't serve hot meals for breakfast on the weekends. So we went to Wal-mart and got some laundry soap and some food supplies for us to have breakfasts on our own for the weekend. I also bought a Skip-bo deck so that we'd have something to do in the laundromat. Who knew that Friday nights were the happening time at the local Wal-mart. Apparently, Friday night is one of the busiest nights at Wal-mart (this one is one of the new ones that has a grocery store on one side) and this little side trip took over an hour to get through the store (it's huge) and wait in the checkout line.
We went to the laundry, did our wash and played Skip-bo while we waited. It's been over 20 years since I've been in a laundromat and pretty long for Barbara too. We also bumped into a few people who were at the laundromat cleaning large piles of clothes and storage goods (like extra bedding, etc). Quite a number of people had basements flooded during the storms and it's easier to do clean-up work when you can use side-by-side washers instead of doing one load at a time (and having things get mildewy or such while sitting around wet, waiting for the next load in the washer).
We got back with a little time to spare before I went in for the 12:30 pm feeding with Dexter. It was about the same, and as the nurse said "It would be generous to say that he ate 2 ml of formula." Ah well, we did have some daddy-time, but we're still hoping that he figures it out before too long. At this rate, he may be the one that needs longer in the NICU than Spencer, but it looks like they are leveling out so that we may be lucky that they'll be released together.
The one good thing from Friday night was that the nursing staff had decided that Spencer was stable enough to handle a change in schedule. He had been on 2:00, 5:00, 8:00, 11:00 cycles which was really hard with Dexter on 12:30, 3:30, 6:30 and 9:30. We would go and spend about an hour with Dexter, then have to wait about 20-30 minutes for Spencer's time. The nurses moved Spencer back to 1:30, 4:30, 7:30 and 10;30, so now we go, have about and hour with Dexter and move right onto Spencer. And it gives us a bit more break between visits.
Every day, a little step forward.
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