NICU Days 23 and 24

  • Post category:NICU
  • Reading time:3 mins read

NICU Day 23

I didn’t post yesterday because the only update was that they bumped his feeds from 25 ml of breastmilk over 3 hours up to 35 ml over 3 hours.

He weighed in at 7 pounds and 9 ounces.

 

 

NICU Day 24

After I got to the hospital tonight after work, I went to see James in the NICU before Stacy and I went to the cafeteria to grab some dinner, just like every other night. When we got back to the NICU around 7:30 pm, we heard a baby crying, and thought, ‘wow, someone is really upset!’ It didn’t take long for us to realize that the crying baby was James! He was upset about something, but we had no idea what. Stacy picked him up out of his bed, and after several minutes of her bouncing with him, whispering to him, and rubbing his back, he finally calmed down. No idea what that was all about. Maybe reflux?

They bumped James’ feeds up today from 35 ml of breastmilk over 3 hours to 40 ml over 3 hours.

During the doctors’ rounds they discussed stopping the Reglan for three days and performing an upper GI on Friday to see how much acid is in his stomach and how much he is refluxing. The GI, or gastrointestinal, tract is the path that food takes through the body. The esophagus, stomach and the first part of the small intestine are parts of the GI tract. For the upper GI test, they will put some barium in James’ stomach and use a special type of x-ray called a fluoroscope so they can watch the barium to see where it goes.

Once they get the results of the upper GI the doctors may discuss performing a fundoplication to keep the acid down. A fundoplication is a laparoscopic surgery where the upper part of the stomach, called the fundus, is wrapped around the lower esophageal sphincter which increases pressure in the esophagus and makes acid reflux less likely. Stacy and I are not sure if we want to do this surgery or not, but we will talk it over with the GI doctor.

The doctors also discussed putting in a G-tube, which is a feeding tube inserted through the abdomen and directly into the stomach. Because James has no suck/swallow reflex and requires frequent suctioning of both his nose and mouth, having a G-tube would eliminate the need for the NG- and NJ-tubes in his nose which would make nasal suctioning easier. Stacy and I would be trained on how to feed via G-tube and how to keep it clean.