01-01-11

Happy 2011!

First day of the new year and we are starting on a positive note.  Cooper is back on track.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Baumert, both of us were able to make it up to Omaha today.  Not that we didn't have lots of people offering to watch Jaxon and Lea, but Grandma and Grandpa were happy to spend some time with them, so it worked out for all us.

So, we made it up here for Cooper's 11 am feeding and found that he had been moved up to 80 mls every 3 hours.  And he was able to take 35 mls by bottle.  It does take quite a while for the rest to be fed to him by feeding tube, which tends to cause issues with his next feeding.  He sleeps well after he eats and doesn't want to wake up for the next feeding.  The 2 pm feeding he only took 10 mls by bottle and at 5 pm they just fed him by tube because he was sleeping and the surgeons only wanted him to feed by bottle 3 times per day because of his reflux. The nurses are going to check with them in the morning since they seem to have his reflux back under control.  Cooper took 43 mls at the 8 pm feeding, which is fabulous.  We are hoping that by morning we will be able to feed him more by bottle and get him back on track to getting out of here.

They will have him up to 90 mls, or 3 ounces, tomorrow and will be able to pull the picc line.  NO MORE IV!! That will be great!  Then we will only have the wires monitoring his vitals and his oxygen keeping him attached to anything.  Nurses think that he might be able to come off the oxygen in a few days.  Just need him to get his breathing under control and then his O2 saturations should remain stable.  Just tends to breath too fast some of the time and then his sats drop, and the reason he needs O2.

We were told today that Cooper will have to have a MRI of the head.  They said it is standard protocol with every baby that has been on ecmo.  They want to make sure that they didn't miss any brain bleeds and check for any possible brain damage that could have possibly occurred while on ecmo and heparin.  They are not worried, but need to follow protocol.  Hoping that they are right and there is nothing to worry about.

We are hoping that we will soon have to bring Cooper's car seat up for them to check out.  They need to check for recalls and they also place him in the car seat to make sure that he doesn't have issues while sitting in the car seat.  They do this a couple of days before his is able to come home.  That will be a good feeling to bring that up to the hospital.  Can't wait.