Bedtime stories

A couple weeks ago we asked my mom to send us some of my paperback childhood books, just a couple. Of course, not one to under-do anything (see the amount of food she serves at any party ever), she shipped somewhere around 15 lbs of reading material.

Because there isn't much privacy in the NICU, especially in Fairfax, where babies are lined up against the wall like ducks, it took me a while to get up the nerve to sing to him. But everyone tells you to do it, so I did. I've run out of lullabies, though (you can only sing The River Lullaby and Evening Prayer so many times), and expect that this weekend I'll be downloading some Disney tunes to refresh my memory and bulk up my stock.

In the meantime, we've started reading. He seems to like it a lot, or so we believe based on his steady vitals and calm demeanor as we regale him with tales of Miss Nelson, Corduroy and the witch "next door."

Today we also found out that they want to try him, on donor breast milk. He's had some loose, green (I know, TMI) stools the last few days as they have increased his feeds, and while all other signs are good (i.e., soft abdomen, no fever, etc.) they want to see whether my breast milk is causing him problems. Everything I've read says that green and loose are really NBD in the early stages (see this page, this page or this page ... I could go on, but I'm guessing you'll just skip all those sites and take my word). It could be that he's not getting enough hind milk (the milk from the end of a feed) or maybe that he's allergic to dairy [in breast milk]. But it also could be diarrhea. All told, I'm feeling defensive and discouraged since right now, providing that is one of the few things this new mom gets to do.

I know that these doctors make knowing poo their business and have good reasons for wanting to try something else. This afternoon I gave consent for them to try donor milk, and they'll start him on it tomorrow night. They'll see whether he gets better over the course of a few days, and then they'll switch him back to mine to see whether he can tolerate it at that point. If he cannot, they'll run some tests on mine to see if they can pinpoint the cause. All I can say is that if they figure out it's all my ice cream consumption I am -- sigh -- willing to drop the habit!