Day Ten

In the morning I found that our sweet nurse Judy had kept a hot pack on Esa's belly all night, put paste on his butt to help him feel better (his butt was just starting to get red), had brushed his gums well every few hours, and put chap stick on. Not only that, but she had made him a mobile. She said that he was awake and looking around and he just needed something to look at. She found a yarn ball, with black and white stripes, made some black and white patterns on index cards and hung them all up with ribbon. She was THE best. It made everything so much better to know that our child was being cared for, not just taken care of.

They had done a breathing trial to see if they could take out the ventilator, but Esa lasted less than 10 minutes. They don't take the ventilator out (it would be terrible to put it back in again), but they took down the support quite a bit. If he had passed he would have another breathing trial and if he still did well they would put him on a bi-pap or c-pap machine. Unfortunately, he was hyperventilating and not getting enough oxygen. The sedative that he was on could have been causing him to have some trouble breathing on his own, so they changed him to a different sedative to see if that would help.

He finally started to lose the fluid and was down to -36ml, which was so great! They had stopped giving him milk early that morning because his belly was so full of gas and he was so sad. By later that day, they started going up on his feeds again to see how he would do.

They took out his Umbilical Arterial Catheter (one of the smaller tubes going into his belly button) and they gave him a another diaretic (on top of the previous ones) to help keep up Esa's potassium so they wouldn't have to replace it as much. They stopped giving him Mellranome, which helps his heart to squeeze better. It was so exciting to see him doing so much better, but a little nerve wracking to see him taken off and put on so much stuff all at once. I swear that during the days that Art stayed with Esa he made so much progress. This was one of those days.
They did another breathing trial, but this time he only lasted 4-5 minutes. They weren't sure why, except that he had never had to breathe on his own. They planned to do another test the following day.
He had an IV in his hand, but it was leaking, so they took it out and his poor little hand was so black and blue, all the way up his fingers and down his wrist. I was pretty glad for that and hoped that was at least one things that would help him to be a little more comfortable.
By the end of the day his swelling had gone down to negative 80! They took out his pacer wires, too.
Art had the day off, so my sister came and got my mom, so they could visit and I took the boys to the zoo for a couple of hours. Jude kept saying, I will listen to you mommy and they both kept telling me that they loved me. It was so good to be with them and be able to go out and do something fun and active. Both of the boys listened so well and were so happy to be together. By the time we finished seeing everything we were all exhausted and somehow we ended up the furthest from the entrance that we could go. I got lost trying to get us out of the zoo because they were doing so much construction there. By the time we got out we were super hungry and tired.
We went back to the hospital and ate dinner, my sister brought my mom back and we went home. The boys fell asleep as soon as we got in the car and were hysterical when we got home and I was trying to get them ready for bed. Poor bubs were so tired from everything. I had to leave early in the morning to bring Art the car and switch with him, so that he could go to work. They slept right away and I snuggled with them for a little while because they probably wouldn't be up before I had to leave. Art was able to get a sleep room that night.