I'm getting to spend a lot of time here with Harper which has been so wonderful. The older and bigger he gets the harder and harder it is to leave him, so I'm happy to be able to be here from 8:00 am until around 4:00 in the afternoon. This gives me the opportunity to feed him three times and get in a lot of snuggles and still be home in time to see Adam get off the bus, help with homework, etc. It's as good a balance as we can manage for now - needless to say we're all looking forward to Harper simply being down the hall rather than down the parkway.
He had a pretty good week. We got to start working on nursing which has been nice and hard - but that was to be expected. He's also started bottle feeding and is pretty much taking all of his feeds now either by bottle or from nursing so that feeding tube ought to be out soon. He still takes about one feed a day from the tube, he's just so tired out usually at the 8:00 p.m. feeding, so we need him to continue to grow and build his stamina so he can get 100% of his feeds in without the tube. He'll get there.
The doctor agreed to start him on some medicine to help with his reflux issues - this was a victory for sure as they aren't usually too quick to want to prescribe the medicine as it hasn't been totally proven to help - but after seeing what the medicine did for Adam's reflux, I was really hoping we'd at least be able to give it a try. I can see some changes already in his comfort and I'm sure as he gets a few more doses in him he'll be even happier. Happy baby - happy momma!
The doctor also started to wean him off his respiratory support - I'll admit I started the week thinking by the end of the week he'd be 100% on room air, and the nurses all agreed. However late on Wednesday Harper decided to put on quite a show with a spell that was rather alarming. (Thankfully we weren't here for it!) He dropped his heart rate, his saturation level went to 12 (woah! 87 is when the alarms start going off) and he took a little break from breathing for about 20 seconds. Good grief. So with a little boost in oxygen and some stimulation from his amazing (yep, that word definitely works here) nurse he recovered and didn't have any other issues the rest of the night. We think this episode was a combination of being pretty worn out from his new skill of eating on his own, having pretty low red blood cell counts, and still battling the reflux (this was the first day he'd received the meds.) A boost in his iron and Epogen shot were ordered and we'll continue to monitor his red blood cells to see if another transfusion is needed. Happily he hasn't had any issues like this since then and we'll see if Week 7 is perhaps the week to back off the nasal cannula.
Back to the good stuff - Harper is spending more time wide awake and alert making for some great photo opportunities. Those eyes - I just can't get over those eyes! :)
Week 6 ended with him hitting the 5 pound mark and being moved to a crib - woohoo and with a special visitor...but that deserves it's own post. :)
1 comment:
I can't get over those eyes!!! Love these posts and pumped for Harpers progress.
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