Update from Morning Rounds

During morning rounds we learned that Ryan has lost a substantial amount of weight because he has been fed primarily through a sugar water IV and has only been receiving a half ounce of breastmilk every 3 hours since yesterday. He is down 13 ounces from his birth weight of 7 pounds, so the doctor ordered that a protein mix (TPN) be added to his IV. They are hoping to be able to up the amount of breastmilk per feeding possibly tomorrow depending on how he is doing. He has a lot of mucus in his GI system and has spit up several times, but the nurse practitioner said that his GI motility should improve once they are able to increase his feeding quantity. Regarding his resipratory issues, he is doing a slight bit better maintaining his oxygen levels, but the doctors would like to see him doing much better before they consider trying to wean him down from the level of oxygen he is currently receiving in the hood. They are going to keep everything the same at least for the next 12 hours (including continuing to enforce very limited stimulation) and then re-evaluate him. Hopefully he will improve more dramatically during that time and they'll be comfortable trying to wean him off the oxygen. They also warned us that, assuming he improves and then tolerates slowly weaning him off the oxygen, he will likely have a lot of feeding difficulties. They said that the vast majority of babies who overcome pulmonary hypertension have problems with feeding. Unfortunately we are way too familiar with feeding difficulties from our experience with Ethan. Please pray that Ryan turns the corner within the next 12 hours and really shows improvement in keeping his oxygen saturation level up on his own and respiration rate down. Please also pray that the doctors are able to start weaning the oxygen in his hood down, that he tolerates it well, and that we are able to hold him as soon as possible. I am hopeful that he will "prove them wrong" about feedings and do much better than they are expecting him to do when it comes to eating/nursing. I asked if the nurse practitioner could guesstimate when we might be able to go home (assuming all goes well and his condition doesn't worsen), and she said her best estimate would be 1-2 weeks from today. We were a bit surprised (and definitely disappointed) that Ryan might need to be here that long.