Another Week in the NICU

So, we’ve had a busy week. Michael and I have spent every day at the hospital with Isaac in the NICU. Since we last posted an update here, Isaac has been doing pretty well. On Monday he started eating from a bottle for the first time – I have been pumping, so we haven’t had to give him any formula. He took the bottle well. They have been keeping track of how much he is eating – he started on Monday taking 10 milliliters, and now he is up to 75 milliliters. He started nursing on Tuesday for the first time since the night he was born. They have a very sensitive scale that they weigh him on before and after he nurses so that they can continue to keep track of how much he is eating. They seem very pleased that he is eating so well, and the doctors are happy that he is able to nurse because that means that he can breath through his nose while his mouth is totally blocked, which shows that the stents in his nose are working to help him breath well.

On Tuesday (Isaac’s due date), they started him on a bili blanket to help with jaundice. He also got weaned off of the nasal cannula (the little tube that ran under his nose to provide a little oxygen flow) that day. It was nice to have that off – he is looking more and more like a normal, healthy baby as they gradually remove more and more of the tubes and wires that are all around his little crib in his NICU room.

Wednesday was Kolby’s 4th birthday and Halloween. My mom made cupcakes for Kolby to take to his preschool class at the YMCA, and he was so excited – he was bouncing off the walls all day. He got to wear his Halloween costume to his classes too, which was fun for him. After we dropped him off at the YMCA, Michael and I went to the hospital. I got a chance to nurse Isaac that morning, and then we dressed him up in the little teddy bear Halloween costume that Camden wore last year and took some fun photos. He was so cute! Then Michael and I attended an infant CPR class -- a requirement for parents before leaving the NICU. After that Michael had a quick meeting for a derm research project he is working on, and then he went home to pick up my mom and the boys. I nursed Isaac again and then walked over to the medical school to meet the rest of the family. The boys were excited to be all dressed up in their costumes and go trick-or-treating through the halls of the medical school at the annual MCW Halloween party. I have to say, I think we were in the company of the cutest Tigger, dinosaur, and lion in the whole building. After accumulating about 15 pounds of candy between the three boys, we went and got some dinner and put the boys down to bed.

Today Michael started his pediatric radiology rotation. His October rotation was an elective course and he had already finished most of the work for the rotation when Isaac went into the NICU, so they gave him the last few days off and just let him finish his last few projects in his own time. So it is weird now that he is starting a new rotation and can’t go with me to the NICU every day. Luckily his rotation this month is also in Children’s Hospital, just a few floors down from the NICU, so he could get there quickly if he needed to. Kolby had his 4-year-old check-up at the doctor’s office late this morning, so I waited to take him to that appointment before going into the hospital today. Kolby is healthy, and they did a hearing and vision test, which he did well on. He got several shots, and it was the first time that I ever felt kinda sad when one of my kids got shots, because Kolby is now old enough that he was saying things like, “No, Mommy, it hurts,” while the nurse was giving him the shots, instead of just crying. Luckily he calmed down a little when he got a sticker afterwards.

Shortly after I got to the hospital this afternoon, Michael arrived too. The doctor on his peds radiology rotation was nice and said that spending time with his baby was more important than anything he could teach him, so he let him leave around 2:00 today. Isaac had an IV in his foot that they weren’t using anymore, but they had left it in so that they wouldn’t have to put in a new one in case he ended up having a surgery this week to remove the stents from his nose. But last night I guess the IV fell out, so they have just left it out, and he didn’t end up needing it for surgery – so that’s one less tube hanging off of his body – one step closer to ‘normal.’ We were able to give Isaac a bath for the first time – the nurses had always done it up until now. And I brushed his hair all cute afterwards, which was fun. Isaac did ok with nursing today, and then Michael got to give him a bottle feeding too.

The ENT doctor came by to talk to us, and he gave us the option to have them do the surgery tomorrow to remove his stents or to try to wait another week. After discussing it with the doctor, we decided to try to wait another week and let his nose continue to heal before removing the stents. So, he has that surgery scheduled for next Thursday. The other big thing that the doctor told us was that we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that Isaac might have another breathing problem besides the nasal passageway. The only way to tell that is to remove the stents from his nose and give him time to recover from the surgery and then see if he is breathing normally. If not, then they will consider the possibility that he could have another problem, like possibly with his tongue falling back in his mouth all the time and blocking the airway or something else. Anyway, it sounds like he will not be coming home anytime soon. We know for sure now that they will be keeping him there through next Thursday for the surgery, and then he will probably need a few days to recover from that. Plus they told us originally that once he gets to the point where he is breathing and eating normally, he will still need to stay in the NICU for 48 to 72 hours for them to monitor him and make sure he is doing fine. So, as long as there are no further complications, it looks like it will still be at least a week and a half before he gets to come home.