Quick Updates

Dear all,

I have so much work I couldn't finish at the office today that I need to finish before I go to bed. But since I need to update Jong about Isaac anyway (he is in the U.S. again), I thought I'd just do it here so everyone can get the updates too. No time for pictures or videos tonight though.

-Isaac weighed 1,520 grams today

-Apparently, they started feeding Isaac 5 ml by mouth today! They are only doing this 3 times a day during the day so I didn't get to see it. But still, yippee yeah!!!

-Isaac is now on a nasal cannular but they are still keeping the isolette at 30% oxygen though. Apparently, Isaac didn't like the nasal cannular when they first put it on and he already tried to pull it out!

-Isaac can now lift and turn his head by himself when he is lying on his tummy. He has to do this in two different stages, he first moves his head so he is almost face down, then he turns his head to the other side. I saw him do this tonight.

-His new ability to lift his head and move it more has helped him get even better at trying to wriggle up the incubator. Actually, he doesn't really wriggle up, its more like he is trying to swim butterfly style with his arm. I saw him climb up quite a bit tonight too.

-Unfortunately, Isaac was really tired today (may be from the climbing?) and he wasn't breathing as well. He crashed quite a few times today and the crashes lasted longer than before, including a couple of crashes where his SpO2 fell to the 60 percentiles. Please continue to pray for his strength and stamina for his breathing and healing of his CLD.

I ended up staying at the hospital for quite a while tonight. The nurses were very busy and couldn't get me the pumping equipment till pretty late. Then when I was all set, Isaac decided to move his head and climb up the incubator so I had to stop pumping and try to calm him down (as this was affecting his breathing). I ended up holding him up for a little while and putting him back down on his side instead of his tummy and he got real comfortable after that. Then, after I started pumping for a few minutes, Isaac's heart surgeon, Dr. Ozawa, showed up to check up on Isaac so we ended up talking for a bit.

Isn't it amazing that Dr. Ozawa is still checking up on Isaac regularly? I don't know how often he comes by but it seems like he tries to come and see Isaac when he is in the hospital because he said he was there yesterday too. I am just so amazed about that! This is one of the reasons why I haven't mentioned transferring Isaac to a hospital closer to us for a while. The nurses and doctors at Toho really care about little Isaac so I don't think it would be good to transfer him to a brand new place with doctors and nurses who don't know him. We might still want to ask our doctor what he thinks about transferring Isaac once he graduates from NICU to the less intensive unit but we do not want to move him as long as he is in Toho's NICU.

Oh, and I want to mention that when I was changing Isaac's diapers tonight. I somehow thought about all these stories of friends getting sprayed by their boys while changing their diapers when my friends were still very new at it. So I pulled up the fresh diaper to make sure Isaac's pee pee was covered before I tried to find the tape on the top of the diapers. Well, good thing I did that because he immediately started peeing right there and then! It could have been a golden shower for him! So I ended up changing him twice tonight. ^_^

Another praise I have is just a week or two ago, I was getting quite worried about my milk supply which was going down. Well, it seems like my milk supply started improving this weekend. It could be because:

A. I started having oatmeal every day, which is supposed to be really good for milk supply, even though I used to utterly hate oatmeal (this time I discovered maple and brown sugar flavored Quaker instant oatmeal which turned out to be not so bad);

B. I started having a small glass of light beer every night, which I have also been told is good for milk supply;

C. I asked my HP sisters to pray for me and a lot of them did; and/or

D. After being able to hold Isaac up and change his diapers myself, it made me feel more like a mommy so I started releasing more milk making hormones.

I think the answer is all four of the above but I think option C was the biggest reason. ^_^

Anyway, this was supposed to be short and I ended up being long winded again.

Take care and God bless everyone!

Sonia