Day 68 - Emotional Rollercoaster

Today is day 68 of Joshua's life and hospital stay, which leaves us just 38 days until Christmas and his hopeful homecoming. We have just 12 days until surgery! Joshua had a weight gain finally and weighs now 11 pounds 8 ounces! He's really growing!! Just an update on his feeds for the record: he is now taking 6 bottles by mouth of 45ml each containing breastmilk and a small amount of formula to up the calories. He also has a multivitamin with iron mixed in for one of the bottles and also prevacid mixed for two of them. He is taking 29ml per hour of a mix of elacare formula, ostomy output (what has been partially digested from the bottles) and pectin (additional fiber to help him absorb more water and have less runny stools) continuously via tube in his mucous fistula.



He is just doing really well and I'm very grateful for that. He is continuing to grow and become more "baby" like rather than just newborn. He's awake more and communicates with us with face expressions and body movements. We just a gym mat for the floor, so we can sit on the floor with him and play. I'm very excited about that. It gives us another place to interact with him other than just the rocking chair! They've given us lots of toys to use to play with him as well. He's just starting to notice toys. He just stares at them so far. But right now, staring means he likes it!



I'm feeling much better today. We've had some issues lately with the doctors sort of not really listening to our concerns, but today I got to speak with the resident for quite awhile and I was really impressed with how well he listened, how much he had researched our issues before coming in and how much he really seemed to care. My issues stemmed from a comment yesterday morning, when I asked why we were giving him the multivitamin plus iron and one of our doctors said "Because we give it to all the babies". I was just like, really, just because you give it to all the babies. So you don't test to see if a baby really needs it, or anything. Our main reason for questioning it was because the iron seemed to be upsetting his stomach and causing him to be very upset after taking it. So we just wanted to know how necessary it really was. We are just not the kind of people who do what everyone else is doing, just because everyone else is doing it. We do and everyone should question why is everyone doing it? Is there really a good reason or are we just following. I wish more people would question things, so that when we do we don't look so crazy to the medical professionals!!

But anyway, after my discussion today, I feel much better about it and realize that he needs to supplement for the fact that he's had surgery and will have another one and therefore has lost and will lose some blood which contains his newborn storage of iron. I just wish he could've been the one that answered my questions yesterday. It might've saved me some frustration! I am just so glad that whenever we do have problems, there is always someone to remedy it for us. They really do care. I really needed this today. We had one of our favorite nurses too, so it was a good day! We have a handful of nurses that are our "primaries" that we get anytime they're working. We have two for daytime and two for nighttime. We don't always have them because of schedules and things, but it's so nice when we do. They know Joshua, they know what is going on with him and what care he needs, they know Steve and I and what we do with him. I don't have to explain to them for the 100th time how his care is usually done, when we feed him, the schedule Steve and I do, anything. It's just so nice. Plus we've gotten to know them enough that we can just have normal conversations with them about families and travel or whatever and it's nice to have that. So we love our Dawn, Ashley, Jane and Elizabeth!!! There's a couple of others that we've had periodically that we really enjoy too especially Amy and Beth. But we don't get them very often.



So I'm feeling pretty good right now. I know that tomorrow, or the next day I might be down again, but I guess that's the nature of the beast, or so to speak. Ups and downs come with the territory. And every early morning or late night, is one step closer to getting him home and we're really getting close now.



So in other news, we're doing pretty good. We have some of our Christmas shopping done. We're trying to get it all done by the surgery since we don't know how crazy our schedule will be after it. It's been so fun buying for three kids this year!! Tomorrow night is another basketball practice for Noah and Abby has cheerleading Sunday nights. She had her little meet and greet last weekend and loved it! I'm glad she's having fun with it. I can't wait to see her in her little uniform!! We're also planning our Disney trip. We can't decide if we want to go earlier in February or wait until the beginning of March. I CAN NOT WAIT!!! The kids found a caterpillar today and put it in our butterfly tent. They named it Pilly and gave it lots of leaves and grass to eat and they can't wait to see what happens with it.



Well here's a couple of pics of Noah and Abby. Abby's picture is from a week or so ago when we had been watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and she asked me about my wedding dress. I got it out to show her and then suggested she try it on!! She loved it all!! She's even wearing my veil. She's so beautiful! I showed the picture to Daddy and he said yes she is beautiful, but she's never getting married!!! He doesn't want her to leave!! And Noah's picture was Sunday. I just thought he looked so cute in his outfit for the day and snapped a few shots of him!! They both look so grown up!! Oh where did the time go??

Oh, and I almost forgot, Noah and Abby will get to visit Joshua!! I think we're scheduling it for next Wednesday! We had to get it approved from the "higher ups", but they finally agreed and I can't wait to see my three babies together again. It's going to be awesome!! Well that's it for now. I'll update again soon and I have pictures of bowling to share!!