Juggling Act

I sent Ronny up to rounds with Aaron this morning while I took Ben in to the doctor for some allergy relief. Last night we all walked to the park and let the kids play for about an hour before we headed up to the hospital. We are constantly trying to juggle life at home, visits to the NICU, and time together. There never seems to be enough time to get anything 100% complete, especially when it comes to laundry, vacuuming, and the dishes! I see paper plates becoming a staple this summer time, sorry to my environmental friends, something just has to give. For now we are doing our best to keep up and the rest will just have to wait!

In rounds today they decided that whatever is causing an elevation in white blood cells the antibiotics he is getting are probably killing it off. None of the cultures have grown anything, there are a few theories on why that is. They will continue his antibiotics for another 5 days and see if they have killed everything. He is breathing much better today and hopefully tonight or tomorrow he will start moving back down on his flow. His team has decided that he needs to grow more and faster. So the goal for this week is to increase his feeds by 1 ml everyday and increase his extra calories. By Friday they want him up to 10 mls per feed. (2 tsp) To do this they will need to get rid of his IV's, so they have decided not to put a pic-line in and do their best with the IV's until they pull them completely. As they increase his feeds they decrease the amount of fluid he is getting through the IV's so at some point they won't need to give him anything in the IV and they will take them out.

Aaron also had an eye exam this week. He does not have any problems with his retinas so far. His eyes are not yet vascularized so they will still need to be careful with his saturation levels. He will get eye exams every week until they are completely vascularized. At some point he will also get a hearing test but we do not yet know when that is. We can tell he can hear us though as he turns his head to our voices and wakes up when we first arrive and talk to him. I also asked about his immunizations. He will get them but not until he is 60 days old which will be on his actual due date. Its also Saturday today which means he gets another puppy photo. Ronny forgot the camera this morning so I will take one when I go up later today.

On another note (and I'm sure my mother will be horrified when I share this, sorry Mom) my period started again yesterday. I know its my period because cramps have arrived with it. Really!?! There is something seriously wrong about not even getting the 9 months off when you are pregnant, my due date wasn't even until the middle of July! So not fair!!!!!!!