9-7-10

Today started out rocky when Oliver's nurse practioner showed me his weaning taper schedule for the morphine. He would have switched to oral morphine on 9-12-10 but he wouldn't have been off of that until 9-27-10. That is 20 more days!!!! I asked her if he can go home on oral morphine if that was the only thing keeping him here and she said no they don't generally do that. So when it came time for rounds at 1100 I had emotional breakdown in front of the doctors when they told me he COULD go home on oral morphine if he is eating on his own and breathing better although I think his breathing is fine. I still don't know the date of discharge but I'm glad it's not 20 days now.

Today was a day his morphine was weaned again and they went down to 18mcg/kg. Then this afternoon around 2:30 the nurse said the doctors and nurse practioner decided to decrease it more to 15mcg/kg, a 5mcg drop from yesterday. They decided to do this because the taper they had started in Bay 1 was for a baby that would have been on the morphine for more than 30 days and Oliver isn't even 30 days old yet. I told the nurses what his withdrawal signs look like and that he usually just requires 1 PRN (as needed dose)of morphine to help with the withdrawal if he isn't tolerating the lower dose well. So far when I'm posting this I haven't seen any signs of withdrawal.

Today the doctors kept his oxygen the same and plan to decrease it from 2L tomorrow at 40% oxygen concentration. They also increased his feedings to 50ml every 3 hours (about 1 and 2/3 ounce) and told me what the breastfeeding protocol was. I tried breastfeeding again at noon today and it went a lot better than yesterday with the help of a wonderful little thing called a nipple shield. The nurse still gave him his full feed and charted he only sucked for a minute but I think he did much better than a minute of feeding. So much so that he spit up a lot of feeding on me after his bolus tube feed was done. Then when they checked the residual (amount left in his stomach) before the next feeding he had 15ml left in it which is more than 10% so they have to call the doctor about it. They weren't concerned about the amount left in his stomach.

Grandma Shirley came to visit us again and got to hold her grandson for the first time. His previous attending physicians Dr. Dagle and Dr. Segar also came to make a social visit to see how he is doing this afternoon.