Day 4 in NICU

November 16, 2013

    Jefferson had a much better day today!  He did really well and pretty much slept through the night while the nurse fed him through tube, only moving him to change his bum.  In the morning when I first went to see him he was much more alert and fed really well.  He keeps getting better and better when he eats from me.  He is finally starting to get it and he is doing better in putting his toung down and out of the way.  

   His oxygen levels were around 35 through the night.  Not too high, but he seems to be getting lower.  The Drs decided to put him on a schedule for every 3 hours and his feeding a changed from 45mils per feeding to 53mils.  In order to try and figure out how much he ate after nursing, we started to use a Breastfeeding scale before and after.  It weighs him and then figures out the difference of what he ate from me.  Then after weighing him we then know about how much more to feed him.  We then try with a bottle and see how much he will eat from there before getting too tired or uninterested, and then we feed the rest through his tube. This has been a good plan so far.  It seems to be helping his oxygen levels stay down and he is nursing better each time I feed him. With his heart defect he doesn't have any energy.  He is tired all the time and barely has enough energy to even eat.  It breaks my heart to see him work so hard and get tired so quickly.  Between his heart problem, low glucose the first couple of days, his PDA (I'll explain later) still being open, low temperatures at times, and his oxygen levels, poor guy is using all his energy just to breathe.

   He is such an amazing little dude and is a fighter.  Although it feels like forever, I know he needs to be here in the nicu to get him strong so he can come home.  We just absolutely adore him and cannot get enough!! 

    I feel guilty I have not been able to spend much time with my little princess, but hopefully since things are more under control with Jefferson I will get to see her more.  She got to hold her little brother today.  The NICU only lets her come for 15 minutes, 2 times a week, so she was really excited to get to hold and see him. She is going to be one amazing big sister to this little stud.  They are going to be the best of friends!

I LOVE his hair!!