Another Day of Firsts!

Today Jaime had his first experience with breast milk. He was tube fed 1ml an hour. You can see his first 4hr. feed in the syringe held by Shannon. Jaime also had his first experience with spitting up! (Not pretty, especially with a tube in his mouth, too!)
He tolerated the feed, a little. I personally don't think he did great with it. Tonight, his nurse, Faith (Welcome back to work new mommy), checked his tummy when I was there, nothing much was left in it...this was a good thing. This meant that Jaime's body is figuring out how to digest the milk. Well, when Tom went to visit Jaime after me, Jaime was really uncomfortable and spitting up some more. He hasn't pooped since surgery either, so that might be the reason why he's uncomfortable and spitting up, too. So, we'll see how long they actually keep him on the feeds.
Tom said that Faith gave Jaime some Morphine to calm him down a bit. I hope that works. It stinks to see him so uncomfortable and then he starts to desat and his heart rate drops. Poor guy!
Another thing going on with him is that he's been weaned off of his Morphine drip completely and is in the process of being weaned off of his Versed. We were told that he could have some detox issues, as all babies do when this happens.

I missed rounds today, but I was told that the drs. discussed Jaime's extubation. They think that he may have a collapsed airway. Pulmonary/ENT is being consulted, the new plan is to have Jaime scoped to figure out if the problem lies in his airway or not. His co2 was extremely high (126) after extubation, so they are thinking that most likely it's an airway issue. Only time and more physicians on Jaime's team will tell.
Speaking of adding more physicians, I received my 1st statement from Anthem today regarding Jaime's care. Are you all ready for this? For his first 10 days, his care cost $499,651.22. Now that we are at day 32, we are probably up to $1.5 million. I'm so glad that we have insurance.

Overall, it was an exhausting day. Jared wasn't on his best behavior, I only slept for about 3 hours or so and Jaime wasn't all that great. Stacy went back to Columbus and Tom came back to Cincinnati. (He had a great time in Cleveland!)
On the plus side, Bev and Jeanie came up for a visit. It's always great to see them! Thanks girls for listening to me "rant" today.

While this post is entitled a day of "firsts," I must make a 1st for me. This will be my 1st negative post about the RCNIC. Lately, when we go in to see Jaime, he's been having new nurses. While, the nurses are WONDERFUL, we don't know everyone nor do they know us. It's getting really frustrating not having consistency with Jaime's nurses, especially with all of the changes going on with him lately. It stinks when we see other nurses in the pods who know him very well and have had him many times, whether it be on 1st shift or 3rd shift, yet they are not assigned to him. I think it would be really great to have just a few primary nurses who rotated all of the time. Part of my complaint is that the nurses that we have had many times have spoiled us and we miss them not caring for Jaime. They are just as much part of his journey as we are! Don't get me wrong, Jaime is well taken care of no matter who he has,it's just a little less personal when the nurses are always changing.

That's my post for today.

Have a nice week.
Sheryl

P.S. Jared changed Jaime's diaper for the 1st time today, too!