Tentative Plans

It looks like James will be having his surgery on Monday. We're not totally sure of the scheduling yet, though (so there's some chance it may be Tuesday instead). Poor baby! Hopefully this will be the final step to getting his feeding on track. The time for recovery from the surgery depends on what they find. If it's just the one narrow area that needs to be removed, then it sounds like recovery is relatively quick; if they have to remove other portions of the bowel, it could be longer. (During the surgery, they do what's called "running the bowel" or "running the gut" -- physically feeling the entire intestine to identify any problem areas. Despite the name, I don't expect this to become an Olympic sport any time soon.)

Mattie is doing well; he took his entire bottle a couple of times today and also did well with breastfeeding. Since he is not hooked up to any wires, he also gets picked up and held more these days. (He's sort of turning into a newborn. Preemies don't cry much unless you're doing something to them that they don't like, but Mattie's starting to sometimes fuss a little at other times as well, and holding seems to calm him down.)

They recommend that parents spend the night in one of the NICU sleep rooms with the baby before the baby goes home, to practice all the night feedings and get a little more comfortable with taking full care of the baby (but with help just down the hall). They've got a room reserved for us one night next week. We don't know exactly when Mattie might be discharged, because it mostly depends on how well he does with his feeding. But our nurse recommended that the overnight be not right before discharge, since they like you to be rested for the first night at home with the baby! (Hmm, getting that one last night of sleep before the year or so of sleep deprivation?)

They also got the results back from a urine test that they did a week or so ago to rule out some possible causes of Matthew's high blood pressure, and fortunately, the test did indeed rule out those causes. This was a huge relief for me, because the earlier discussion of the test boiled down to "your baby might have cancer or another kind of adrenal tumor, but it's a really low probability so you shouldn't worry about it." Mike was actually able to take them at their word and didn't worry about it, but I got all short of breath and teary-eyed whenever I thought about it. They could tell us all they wanted that they didn't think that was what it was, but to me, the fact that they were testing for it suggested that it was a possibility. But now that's off the table, so I'm a happier camper.