9-20-10

In less than 24 hours we will be on our way home... I hope. Today is Oliver's first day without morphine. It has been 26 hours without it now and so far so good. He also remains off the oxygen and does well off of it. We're getting ready to go home. The dietitian came in today to talk to me about his calorie needs since he still is small. He will need to have special formula for newborns mixed in with my breastmilk to give him extra calories and protein. He needs to have this in at least 2 bottles a day. Breastfeeding is going better for us now as well. I think the bottle actually helped him learn how to suck and swallow better so he breastfeeds better. He will also need to take a multivitamin with a lot of iron in it daily due to his hemaglobin problems. Speak of hemaglobin (red blood cells)... last monday it was 11.3 and today it was 8.6, which is quite low. This concerns me a bit because that is a big drop in a weeks time. The doctors aren't concerned about it now since he is not symptomatic and says that it can be follow up upon with Dr. Callahan in Dubuque on our follow up appointment Thursday. I just don't want it to get so low again like it was when he was born. I was hoping they would check it again before we leave just to make sure that it will be okay to wait 3 days until Dr. Callahan checks it. I just want to know why his bone marrow is so slow at producing blood but they still have to reason for me as to why he is doing this, all the usual culprits have come back normal.


Since not much to post here are some more pictures of him sitting in his car seat in the crib for his car seat evaluation.