Selection Sunday!

Well, Dad was officially disappointed when Austin decided to take his nap during The Selection Show!  Oh well, there's always the actual games starting on Thursday!  March Madness is a big deal at the Joneses!

Austin had another great day!  He's happy, he's alert, playing and making progress!  Dr. Kreykes was in this morning and spoke with Brian.  He's very pleased at how things are going and has been in contact with GI (we've figured out there is sometimes behind the scenes stuff going on around here. ha ha!).  He ordered for his enteral feeds to be increased by 1ml/2 hours! Wowza, that's aggressive!  Austin tolerated the increase to 4ml/hr and then we gave him an extra hour and a half at 5ml/hr.  He had a couple episodes of gagging and a little discomfort!  He went up to 6ml/hr at 4:30pm and just went up to 7ml/hr at 6:30pm.  He woke up from a good nap about 6:30pm and is playing with his little jungle gym and telling stories!  Pretty happy boy right now.  We will continue to increase him as long as he tolerates it.

Tylenol is still keeping his pain at bay.  He had a short time this afternoon where he was a little uncomfortable.  Didn't take long and he was resting again!  He's been such a tough boy!

This afternoon he got the first of 3 doses of iron.  His hemoglobin had been declining slowly prior to surgery, so on Friday they did labs and decided on a plan.  It's typical for TPN babies to start to have low iron around 4-6 months of age because their "storage" from birth wears off.  It's also the age babies often start cereal or oatmeal which has iron in it.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Brian and I are now in the every other day/night routine so that Max can sleep at home and return to daycare.  It's a little harder now that both of us are trying to work and balance the hospital and home!  Just a few more days....Mondays are always very busy around here, so expect a big update tomorrow!

Hugs,
Brian and Tara
Max and Austin