No Plan Yet

Still no plan for James, but he had another little small/smear poop this morning, so they have that information to add to their decision-making. The doctor actually saw this one, which I think is helpful. I wouldn't be completely surprised if the plan is "let's do another GI study." We found out yesterday that the previous study showed only three inches of bowel (that is, the contrast material only made it through the bottom three inches of his bowel, whereas the whole bowel is really long, maybe 10-20 feet), and the doctor mentioned again that it would be really unusual to have a stricture that low (of course, James hasn't specialized in "usual", but the doctor's working hypothesis was that it was some other kind of obstruction, like a twisted intestine). Combined with our nurse's mention that the procedure seemed a little different than previous times she'd seen it, and the fact that we're only a couple of weeks out from the time when all the new interns come in to the hospital, I think there's also at least a possibility that the study wasn't done correctly. But we should know more about the plan later today, so probably I shouldn't be spending too much time speculating about these things!

The big change for Matthew this morning is that they've discontinued two of his monitors. They're taking off the respiration and heart monitors, and leaving just the pulse oximeter. ("What? How will we know if he's tachypneic?") That's exciting, but there goes our security blanket! (The output from the monitors is tracked in almost real-time on screens by the babies, and alarms go off if their heart rate, breathing rate, or blood oxygen saturation drops below certain levels.) The nurses have been telling us all along to "watch the baby, not the monitor" (to tell if he's breathing, if his color looks good, etc.), and now we won't have much choice. :)