A new room

August 12, 2011

The doctors started having us feed Keean strictly by tube and only wanted us to give him 5-10ml's by mouth for comfort. 

A scary thing stopping a baby from eating by mouth is that they potentially could lose their ability to suck, which in turn could cause them to have to re-learn how to eat.  We didn't want this to happen, obviously, so we really forced the nuk on Keean as well as allowed him to eat some by mouth.

At this point, Keean had only thrown up once (instead of the numerous, can't even count it all on 2 hands kind of puking he was doing before).  Being the feeding tube was passing through his stomach and into his intestines, Keean did experience some cramping at first from the feeding tube, but that also seemed to be getting better.  He was getting outside and we were just waiting around monitoring his weight every morning and crossing our fingers we were on the right path. Keean was getting 24 calories/ounce at this point (again the standard is 20cal/ounce). 

Like I said before, we were doing pretty good.  It was day 8 in the hospital and we were told 5-7 more days just to keep an eye on things.  It wasn't going to be too bad.  I would be home by the time school started and could be there for Mason when he started 6th grade.  I was offered a position at the school working 4 hours a day as a para which would be perfect and I wouldn't even have to call and tell them I wouldn't be there!  Awesome!  Things were good.  And I was counting down those 5-7 days like a child does counting down for Christmas. 

We were also offered to move rooms.  We had been in the small room with no bathroom and barely any room for 3 people and a chair for 8 days.  When we had visitors we would go in the family lounge so everyone could fit. This room would have a bathroom and was about twice the size of the one we were in. They told us the only stipulation with the room is we wouldn't have a window.  WOOP-TE-DO.  I didn't care.  I would take no window over 3am walks down the long hallway to use a restroom and to have twice the space.  The window view from Children's Hospital in Minneapolis was nothing to brag about anyway.  Not sure if any of you have been there, but let's just say I'm not sure who thought up the location of a beautiful new Children's Hospital, but I would love to talk to him/her and hear the logic behind the place they decided to build.  It makes no sense. Let's just say I was scared to leave.  It was an ok thing that I couldn't see outside.

So, we moved to a bigger room and with this move came new nurses.  We were still in the Infant Care Center, but it was a completely different wing.  This was ok with me, but it is always a little scary letting new people learn Keean and us and our routine.  Now, I obviously know that I had nothing to worry about, but then it was just something else to stress over: new faces, new personalities, who I could trust, who I didn't want in our room and getting to know our "neighbors" and their stories.

We all moved, we settled in and we kept on counting 5-7 days and we could escape and start our life back home again!  I couldn't wait....

This picture was taken in the hall right outside our new room.  Keean and daddy were taking a walk while we were able to get out in the halls and go outside :)