Day 51 - Gifts and Weekend Fun

Today is day 51 of Joshua's life and hospital stay which means we have 55 days until Christmas and 29 days until his surgery. Under 30 days until surgery!! Yay!!

He is hovering just under 11 pounds now. Sometime in the next day or two he should that 11 pound mark. He is now "re-feeding". That means we feed him the breastmilk into the nasal tube as before, and then the output from that into his ostomy bag is then added to the elecare formula that goes into the lower half. That way he gets the breastmilk through his whole system, plus all the stomach juices are put into the bottom part to help digest the formula. He's been doing this for a few days now and he's gaining weight and his poops from the bottom are more solid and that makes the doctors happy. They upped the amount of calories he's getting in the formula to 24 and he's getting 28ml an hour of it. Because he's doing so well with that, they decided to wean him off of the liquid iv food and today they finally took it off!! Yay!! One less tube to worry about!! He still has to keep the PICC line until surgery because it's a difficult procedure to put in the line, but it's capped off now and doesn't have a long tube connected to it.

He's up to 4 bottles a day with 8ml in each one. Daddy and I each do 2 bottles a day. He has spit up a few of them, but overall he's doing well with them and really seems to enjoy that time of day. 8 milliliters is only 1.6 teaspoons so he drinks it very fast, but it's so nice that he's getting daily doses of milk by mouth and using all those drinking skills so he doesn't ever lose them.

Oh and to explain the craziness of the photos!! I wanted to show the slippers and stuffed animal that he got as a gift yesterday. They called it a Halloween gift, but it doesn't really seem like a Halloween gift, so it's just a gift!! So he got those turtle slippers and matching stuffed animal and a copy of the book Guess How Much I Love You. I thought that was nice! The gift bag had a tag on it that said part of it was funded by the Ruth Lyons fund, so if you've ever donated to that, thank you!! And I know whose getting a donation from us when all of this over!! They really are sweet to us there. They do their best to make a tough time, easier. He seems to be enjoying his gift, with that cute little smile!!

I was in the waiting room eating lunch yesterday and I chatted with one of the baby's grandmothers. She was telling me why her grandson was there and she mentioned the conditions of a few other babies she knew about, and it just instantly made me realize how very blessed we are to have a completely healthy baby that's just waiting for his reconnection surgery and then he'll be just a normal little boy. These baby's stories would just break your heart. They have missing parts, parts in the wrong spot, parts that just don't work, are born weighing very little (even just 1lb). Being in a private room, you forget how bad the other babies are out there because you never see them. It's just so sad. But thankfully those babies are in the best place for them. Without hospitals like this, they probably wouldn't have a chance at all. It's still just really sad though.

But the rest of us are doing fine. Tired, but fine. I took Noah and Abby to a movie lat Newport last night. We saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I really liked this one. It was funny and cute. Much better than that awful Where the Wild Things Are. We also had dinner at Johnny Rocket's where the kids got to play a song on the jukebox at our table. We only heard Abby's, it was "Honeycomb" a song I didn't know. I knew nearly every song on the jukebox and she chose one I didn't know!! Noah chose "Please, Please Me", but they didn't play it before we left. Instead they started playing "Thriller" which drove Abby crazy because she's scared of it!! We were almost ready to leave and they played it twice in a row!! It was funny!! After dinner we stopped at a candy store and a book store and then we went to the movie. Today Noah had a Lego Club meeting at the mall and then both kids had to go to church for evaluations for Upward basketball and cheerleading. They also had to be fitted for uniforms. I think that starts in December. I hope we can work it all out!! The games don't start until January, so that shouldn't be a problem. So Daddy took them to their things today and then he took them to the grocery. I think they had a nice weekend. They got time out with both parents.

A pic from our "night out on the town!!"

Well I guess that's it for now! We're hanging in there and just getting through it. It'll be over soon and we can get on with our lives!