Echo, UA, and Formula

Aaron had his echo today. He did great! Preliminary results show no change from the time we started to wean the flolan so I am anticipating that being weaned off completely tomorrow pending the final results. His oxygen stats have not improved as of yet, I'm still wondering about his CRT but forgot to bring it up in rounds today so I will have to ask about that later.

Rounds went pretty smoothly. Everything was pretty dependent on the echo so there weren't so many changes. They did talk about having a nephrology consult to see if they couldn't get someone else involved with his swelling. Our Attending this week said he was going to chat with them and see if they had any ideas or if they felt like they needed to have an official consult. Apparently they did as when I called in this afternoon the consult had been ordered. With a consult comes more tests. Its hard to believe they could test his urine in other ways than they already have but another UA (urine analysis) has been ordered as well.

I also asked in rounds about his feedings. Aaron is on this special formula and they don't seem to want to change him back to breast milk. I have been pumping since he was born and have quite the stock pile as he doesn't take much and for so long he didn't take any. If they plan to keep him on the formula indefinitely I am going to be done pumping, because really what's the point if he's not going to use it. Also, I have a monumental list of other things I could be doing (one of which is sleeping!) as opposed to pumping for 6+ hours a day (its really a part time job!). The doctor looked right at me and said that was an excellent question and one that needed to be answered sometime in the next week. I have had many people tell me it was absolutely ok to stop and I shouldn't feel bad. So let me just say, I don't feel bad at all about stopping. I would prefer him to have breast milk over normal formula but he is on a specific formula that doesn't have the milk fat that he has a hard time breaking down and its filled with the supplements he needs. Supplements that have to be added to the breast milk. This little guy will probably never nurse as his feeds have to be carefully monitored, measured, and fortifier and supplements added and as you can't do that nursing, a bottle of breast milk is the next best thing if he can handle it which at this point he can't. We'll see what they decide in this next week, I'll be fine either way.