Even more progress

Man, I am so excited, Eli is making more progress! When I got here this morning, he was not in his room and I freaked out a bit. But this being the 2nd time this has happened to me (the first was with Caleb when he got moved back to the NICU when he got NEC) I didn't freak out quite as much today as I did with Caleb. I figured he had had a good night and they had moved him over to the NICU. So I had to enlist a nurse to help me find him. He wasn't on the NICU side, so we went to ask at the front desk. The lady there was like, "oh I figured you knew he had moved". I don't think they are very communicative there! But she gave me the room number and I found Eli without a hitch. he got moved to a corner double room, so the first little person I saw was a child much older than Eli so I was a bit confused for a minute. But the doctors that were rounding pointed me to him.

So I was able to listen to the tail end of the rounds today. It sounds like they are working to get his central line out and get a pic line in, which will be good, and a less invasive thing. And then in about 24 hours after that happens they will hopefully be able to get the arterial line out as well. The arterial line is a bit of a catch 22 because it is a lot of tubes and wires and this big plastic board, so it's very cumbersome to hold him and it gets all tangled, but it is nice to have in because they can do blood draws through it without having to poke him every time.

I was also able to ask the doctors about feeding him. Yesterday he acted so hungry and he was only getting a 1cc an hour drip of milk, which isn't enough for him. They decided to change his feed schedule to an every 3 hour feed, which is more like how a NICU would do it, and how a normal baby would eat. So I take that as progress too. They also said they would call PT/OT to see about getting him on oral feeds, so I was really excited about that. I guess when babies have been intabated they have a hard time figuring out feeding again, and especially since their throats hurt for awhile after they have been extabated they have more of a risk to aspirate and choke. So they want to watch closely to make sure all goes smoothly.

Also the main cardiologist doctor of the day said that she thought within 24 hours Eli would hopefully get moved to the floor, which will mean working more on premie/newborn stuff and that they won't need to follow him as much on the cardiology side of things. So that was crazy news as well. We we are just chugging along!

I know a few posts ago Ryan talked breifly about our new "friends" we met who came here the same night that we did and we have all been here ever since. But I was talking to them yesterday how crazy it was that a week ago, we were so distressed and we both agreed that last Monday/Tuesday were the worst days of our lives and now as our children are improving every day (their daughter got extabated yesterday) and we are able to hold our little ones again, how much more happy and hopeful we are about life. It's crazy the transformation they have gone through in the last week, and I am sure mine has mirrored theirs as well. We are still not sure when we will be able to be home, and it is still difficult trying to juggle the hospital with normal life and other children (they have 2 boys as well as their daughter who's here). But we are at least on the downhill side of it now, we just continue to pray that we keep heading in the right direction and no setbacks occur!