Easier day today!

So far today has been a much easier day for Elijah. Not nearly so much poking and prodding, thank goodness! Yesterday wasn't great, even after all of his tests and blood transfusion, he ended up throwing up his feeds a few times and his belly wasn't able to digest the feeds he was getting, and he had large residual volumes at each feeding time. This frustrated me because we had started out really slowly on feeds, which is good because we are trying to avoid NEC and we want his belly to adjust to having food in it. But the nurses and others working with him yesterday were giving him his full maximum amount feed and he wasn't tolerating it well at all. It made me nervous, given my past experience, I am pretty sensitive to my childrens' digestion. So this morning at rounds we kind of reevaluated his feedings. We decided on 10cc every 3 hours, unless he takes and tolerates more on his own, but the most we would put in his NG tube would be to equal 10 cc, which includes what he eats on his own. This made me feel better since he has proven to us that he can eat and digest 10cc without an issue. I am glad that the neonatologist was able to redefine everything for us today because it's exactly what I was thinking I wanted to do as well. Plus he has a good nurse today who is a NICU and CICU nurse so she has more experience with the little babies than a regular CICU nurse, who, whenever they see Eli always exclaim how small he is and they never see babies that size, I am never comfortable with a nurse who says that.

But after rounds we were able to try breast feeding again. That went really well! I was nervous since it had been so long and he hadn't been routing like he did when he was first born, but once he calmed down enough to realize what was going on he was able to latch and got about 8 cc. And seemed to enjoy it better than the bottle, always a good thing.

So after his hiccup yesterday with his clot and feeding, he seems to be doing better today. His set back yesterday will, however, keep us here for longer, and no one has even mentioned moving to the floor again. So we will keep hanging out in our little room for now!