Without a Net

When we went in this morning, we found that they'd taken off all of Matthew's monitors (no pulse oximeter any more). Wow! It makes me a little nervous, but I'm sure they know what they're doing. The philosophy of the current attending doctor is that if babies are ready to go home, they should be off the monitors, which also helps the parents get used to not having that backup. (The photo is of his monitor; the green line at the bottom is output from a pulse oximeter, measuring oxygen saturation in the blood, but that's for another baby, probably James -- since the nurses take care of two babies at once, the monitors usually have the other baby's saturations at the bottom.)

It looks like the new betablocker medicine is working to control Matthew's blood pressure better, which is good. They're going to see whether he needs both that and the analapril or whether the beta blocker alone is enough. We were there for the nephrology (kidney doctor) rounds on him, and they don't seem worried that the cause is anything more serious than the possible tiny blood clots in the kidney (which just go away on their own).

Mike fed Matthew while the speech therapist was there; Mike did a great job and the therapist said that Matthew was doing much better than even a couple of days ago. It sometimes takes him a little while to get going, but once he gets in a rhythm, he does well. Yay, Matthew!

We were there for regular morning rounds as well, and the attending doctor had pretty much the same reaction to the surgery plan for James that we did -- that delaying for a week or more was unacceptable. So, they do think that surgery is necessary despite the fact that James is pooping, but the doctor is going to consult with another surgeon to make a definite plan. (We had been assigned to one surgeon because he did James's previous surgery and they like to have continuity of care, but now it looks like we'll get a different one who can do the procedure sooner -- which is absolutely fine with us.) We'll know more tomorrow, but we are feeling better than we did last night about how this is being handled.