Lots of Moving Parts

We spent most of the day with Lewis today. We learned a lot about the care he will be getting from physical therapists and speech therapists in the coming days and weeks. At first, much of it will be focused on getting him up to speed to eat normally. Many of the skills he needs for eating are predicated on stronger breathing, which will just take time. (Example: you have to be able to hold your breath in order to swallow effectively. This means that you have to be off the nasal cannula, which provides pressure to keep the lungs inflated and makes it difficult to hold your breath). This reminded us why it is so hard to predict anything at this stage - there are lots of moving parts...


Anyway, the Speech Therapist has all sorts of exercises to help him move his tongue and jaw properly for feeding. ("Speech therapy" is sort of a misnomer, at this stage).

No one is quite sure how long it will take to get him up to speed, but the therapists seemed to have a "when" rather than an "if" attitude, which was nice. We'll know more later in the week as they complete preliminary evaluations.

In other news - Lewis moved to new digs today.

The NICU team removed the IV line that was going through his bellybutton and replaced it with one through his foot. That allowed him to move to a bed that should be a little bit more comfy for him. (If you didn't get Nate's school picture last year, check out the right hand side of Lewis' crib ;)

Feeding - changed to "continuous" feed through the nasogastric tube, regulated by a IV type pump. Lewis had been having some reflux problems, they're hoping this will help. Upped to 15 ml/hour.

Respiratory - still congested and having problems handling it - he continues to be suctioned pretty frequently, but his cannula is down to 3 liters of pressure (from 5 a couple days ago, meaning he is doing more of the work of breathing on his own).

Tests - tomorrow, we should have final results on all the tests from Sunday. Tonight, Lewis is scheduled for an MRI. We've been told that this won't tell us much, but is mostly helpful to establish a baseline for future scans.

Spirit - good. Lewis is moving around a good bit - last night he pulled his feeding tube all the way out. I think he got upset because somebody said he was fat.