Keean started to gain weight well after getting the IV nutrition pumping in his body. They continued to feed him formula through his NJ tube (which is the tube that goes up his nose and has a tube that goes into his stomach and one that goes directly into his intestines). Keean had gained 6.5 lbs in 4 days from the IV nutrition and was starting to look so much better. He was still obviously tiny for his age, but not looking so malnourished. Praise the Lord.
The questions at this point were; How damaged are his intestines, how long will it take for them to heal, and what / how much formula can he handle?
Our plan at this point was to watch his weight gain and let him sit on the IV nutrition (TPN) for 4-5 days.
They wanted to get him tolerating sugar in his formula again which was proving to be a more difficult task than one would think. Keean was supposed to get to a sugar of 6% and as soon as we reached 5% he started throwing up and getting uncomfortable. He was bloated, uncomfortable, cranky and was back to having watery mucus in his stool :( It got to be frustrating. We were so encouraged after his weight gain with the TPN, it was hard to see him start going backwards. This backwards stuff went on for a bit and by August 27, Keean was back to gaining weight a little better. He was almost 3 months old and was 9lbs 6oz. He had officially gained a pound since we were admitted to Children's Hospital 3 weeks before. Keean was not bottling much at this point. He seemed to throw up more frequently when he did bottle, but they encouraged us to keep on trying.
There was some talk about sending us to a hospital closer to home, but the GI doctor said that they wouldn't consider it until he was stable and on a formula that he was tolerating and they wanted to get him off of TPN if possible before sending him home. The TPN lines have a greater risk for infection than his feeding tube and it is a lot more dangerous to work with at home.
I was ok with everything going on because they were trying things, changing things and working on getting Keean stable enough to be discharged.
I was just happy that Keean was gaining weight. It's crazy how it was never something I paid close attention to with my oldest son. He was always big for his age. He graced this world at 9lbs 13oz so having a tiny baby and watching those numbers was new. Every morning they would wheel the scale in the room and every morning we would wait ever so impatiently to see what numbers were there. Did he gain weight? Stay the same? Or lose? I was honestly fine as long as they didn't go down. And at this point, he was heading in the right direction.
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