Micah has moved from the “acute care” side to the “continuing care” side of the NICU. 🙂 They had a bunch of babies come in last night–and he’s one of the “better” babies, so they moved him. . .
Dr. Schrager says he is “very close to ready” to go home. Since Micah pulled his feeding tube out of his nose yesterday, they decided to see how it goes without it. He is bottle-feeding on demand usually every 3 – 4 hours (no more tube feedings or fortifying the breastmilk, as of yesterday afternoon). He weighed 4 lbs. 14.8 ozs last night, so he gained about 1/2 oz. The nurse was feeding him this morning at 10 a.m., so I will try to go in between 1 and 2 p.m. today. Dr. Schrager encouraged me, if I want to breastfeed him, start offering that as early and as often as possible, once my milk supply is in. He recommends trying to nurse him every time I get a chance.
A couple of things they are watching:
1) He needs to keep gaining weight & holding his temperature while taking the bottle. If he can’t, he will have to go back to tube feedings.
2) The “periods of alarm”–he’s still having apnea/brady episodes.
These can be related to feeding: reflux/spitting-up/gagging sometimes causes them: this is less of a concern, and different than a premature infant “forgetting” to breathe while sleeping. However, if he is “forgetting” to breathe while sleeping, this is more of a concern.
The goal is for him to go three days without an episode requiring intervention. If he comes out of it by himself, they are not too concerned–he could still go home. Yesterday he had 2 episodes requiring invention before midnight, so Dr. Schrager would not see him going home w/n the next few days. Micah has had no episodes so far today. If these continue, he may need to come home on a monitor–they will discuss all that with us as he progresses.
Dr. Schrager doesn’t “like to bet on babies”, but if he did, he would say “Micah would come home w/n a week–maybe 2.” So, that’s today’s update from the neonatologist. . .