Sunday afternoon

I'm sitting here in the NICU, listening to Rebecca read "Little Quack" to Thomas. Its a very deep and personal journey of a duck who wrestles with the trials and tribulations of being a small duck. Kind of a coming of age story that's sure to be made into an Oscar winning movie. Unfortunately, I'm at a short distance with a mask on, it appears I've got some chest congestion that I'm trying to keep from becoming a full-blown cold.

Thomas is having his own challenges today. Dr. Quann, who is the doc in charge, called Rebecca this morning. They never just call to say hi. Despite being a whopping 1 pound, 12 ounces, Thomas is not growing as much as he needs to. They need him to grow to help his lungs develop, but he's been struggling with the milk because of the bowel issue. On top of that, he's got a lot of fluid in his lungs. They'd like to treat that with a diuretic, but that would also make him lose weight. So he needs to gain weight in order to be able to handle losing weight.

They've switched to a solution that is more easily digestible and they're giving him a constant feed of 1 cc an hour. They hope that will be effective over the next 24 hours. If not, they will try something else.

The nice thing is that when Rebecca touches or holds Thomas, his vitals are really good. When we got here, his O2 reading was taking wild swings going from 95% down to less than 50 % (which has its own special alarm) and back up again. Once Rebecca put her hands in to the isolet, the range become much less pronounced and with her holding him, its basically steady in the low 90s.

As a side note, we heard he also took a pacifier today. The nurse said, he initially didn't care for it, but after a minute, he took right to it and started chewing away. If he uses it again, we'll get a pic.

So we're going to hang out here and keep an eye on him for a while.