Education

Matthew had a nice afternoon with his grandparents today -- he has to take advantage of the attention while he can, since they're all planning to leave tomorrow (despite our campaign to get them to extend their visit).

Meanwhile, we went to the hospital to meet with the ostomy nurse to learn how to take care of James's ostomy and practice changing the ostomy bag. It's not the most pleasant task in the world, but it's not too complicated. He was having a little more bleeding from the ostomy while we were there, but the surgeon came by and cauterized part of it with some silver nitrate. (If I understood correctly, some of the mesentery, the tissue surrounding the intestines, was exposed and getting irritated.) So, hopefully that will solve the bleeding problem, but even if it doesn't, a little blood from the stoma site is not a big deal. (There aren't nerves there, so it's not painful for him.)

James is now up to 19 ml/hour of formula, and they've also switched him to two-hour feedings rather than continuous ones. So, he's getting 57 ml every two hours (which sure sounds like a lot!) Then there's an hour break before the next two-hour feed (that is, two hours on feeds and one off). Sometimes the transition from continuous feeds to more of a bolus (all-at-once) feed can be difficult, so we'll see how he does. It'll certainly be the largest amount he's had in his stomach at once! They're hoping that this change will make it easier to bottle feed him. The past day or so, he's only taken about 10 ml at a time from the bottle, and they think it may be because his tummy is already full from the continuous feeds.