Continued Healing. . . :) 3rd Floor In Sight!

"The Cage" the new bed! Wowzer :)

One of his chest tubes-draining the fluid around his lungs from the lymphoids. They also have to suture the tube to his skin to keep it in place. Oh we are going to have many, many scars!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 (Post Surgery-Day 13)
Last night we received another dreaded phone call during the night saying that after they removed his feeding tube for a trial run of a bottle-he threw up for a while and so they were going to put it back in that morning. Poor kid-his body just can't get use to the different flow of food and on top of that he has acid reflux-which they say is common in heart babies.

When we arrived Wednesday morning we saw that his cozy little bed-was replaced with a much larger, "cage like" bed (at least to me that is what it looked like). He had threw up twice since the feeding tube was put back in, so they were watching him very carefully so he wouldn't choke.

The speech therapist came by to work on his sucking and swallowing, since he had the breathing tube so long he is having to relearn how to do both. He did well-considering yesterday was not the greatest attempt. We were gone when they came yesterday and they decided to see how his does with a bottle anyway. After working with him for about 10 minutes he shut down and wouldn't open up his mouth. So we were hoping today would be better!

We worked with the speech therapists to help Tritt get use to taking a bottle. We would put just a taste of the formula on his binky and let him taste it then work the binky into his mouth. He would somewhat catch on to the whole sucking idea, but not for very long. We eventually introduced the bottle and he began to suck a little more, but got tired very quickly and that's where the feeding tube comes in. The goal is to get 60 ml (2 oz) in him every 3 hours. We start with the bottle feeding and see how much he will take before he tuckers out and/or before 20 minutes are up (they don't want him taking too long to take the full amount since it can take anywhere from 1 hour to 1 and a half to feed him. And they want enough time in between feedings to allow the food to digest before giving him more) then the rest will be given to him through his feeding tube with the pump. It is a process!!

Dr. Bowles (Nurse Practitioner) made the rounds this evening and mentioned about pulling his chest tubes tomorrow morning if they continue "drain dry" through the night. We are praying for this to happen!! He did also begin the "3rd floor talk" with us. If all goes well then possibly we could go up tomorrow. But he will have to pass his sucking/swallowing test tomorrow, keep food down and not reflux, and have his chest tubes "drain dry".

Tomorrow will tell. . . . Praying for a FANTASTIC night of healing and good eating!