Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Changing of the Guard

As we may have mentioned before, the attending doctor (as well as some of the residents and interns) changes every three weeks. (The doctor who just finished up was on duty when the boys were born, and also was on when we were trying to decide whether James needed surgery for his PDA/heart murmur. Our favorite quote from her was, "If I thought he really needed the surgery, I'd be on you like a yappy dog!") Anyhow, we're on to a new doctor, one we hadn't met before. One of the first things the new team discussed doing was going up on James's feeds. Noooo! Fortunately his primary nurse was on today and told them that wasn't a good idea, and they seem to be listening.

They did put him on a new medicine, Actigall, which is supposed to help with his bilirubin levels (and his liver). The latest word on his surgery is that it will be in "early September." I can't believe that's right around the corner.

When we arrived at the hospital today, James was being held by one of the cuddlers. He'd also been held by his nurse and spent some time in his bouncy seat, so it was a good day for James! (We each held him as well.) When we left, he was wide awake and enjoying watching his mobile.

Matthew was actually awake for his stroller ride around the neighborhood today. He seemed to enjoy it! And we even got a halfway decent night's sleep last night, since he slept four hours or so before his middle of the night feeding, and then another three or so after that. (Our current -- and presumably temporary -- improvisation is that he's sleeping in his car seat with the car seat placed in the crib. The motion-sensing monitor in the crib, which is designed to go off if he stops breathing, works even when he's in the car seat, although we think it has a somewhat greater tendency for false alarms that way.) Of course, typing that probably means we're in for a sleepless night tonight!

Mattie also made his first foray onto Franklin Street (the main campus street) tonight, since we stopped to pick up some food on our way home. Even though the students are all back, the restaurant wasn't crowded, which was nice -- we've been a bit wary about taking Mattie out in public, because we don't want to stumble into any hotbeds of swine flu. (Of course, this is the great irony of having to take him to the pediatrician so frequently -- when we go there, we have to sit in the waiting room, which seems to me to be a cauldron of infectious disease. But no one has coughed on him yet.)

2 comments:

Jeff Pomerantz said...

We had C sleeping in the carseat in her crib too for a while, but yes, that'll probably be temporary. Re the carseat: a handy trick that we stumbled onto was that when C had a cold, she slept better in the carseat than lying down. Until she outgrew the carseat anyway.

Yvonne said...

Jeff forgot to mention that when C was in the NICU, her neonatologist told us that his son had terrible acid reflux & slept in his car seat until he was 6 or 7 months old (and of course was a completely fine bouncing toddler by the time he told us that story).