one appointment at a time

Getting in a snowy goodbye before work

This past week Kraemer took Calder to his GI appointment – alone. A little chaos ensued (short story: he forgot his wallet, you need an ID to enter the hospital, and garage parking isn't free) but they made it eventually. I went in to work for an afternoon to wrap up some business related to my personnel annual review, which I timed to coincide with the retirement party of one of my supervisors. How fun it was to see my coworkers’ faces at the shindig! Many of them got to hear the same story about Calder over and over again as new folks joined the conversation. Lucky them. J

Fresh and clean!

Calder’s stoma is looking great. We have more or less annihilated the granuloma (with the silver nitrate at work, believe me, the word annihilated is appropriate). We have made it past the point, too, where we’d have to head to the emergency room were his button to pop out or, rather, if he yanked it out, which was never out of the realm of possibility. In other words, at this stage it’s assumed that the stoma has appropriately healed and that if we needed to reinsert it ourselves, we would have an easy tract to follow. Sort of like the piercing for an earring; once it’s healed thoroughly, you can remove the earring used and reinsert another one without worrying too much about mistakenly redirecting the hole. While nothing is wrong with the equipment itself, it’s time for a new mickey, so next appointment with GI our NP will take care of replacing it for us.

Two tired boys

It's the truth.

We are also going to try moving from seven daily feeds to six. Thus far Kraemer has handled the nighttime feeds so that I can pump and still get some sleep, as opposed to me taking care of both activities myself, in which case, let’s see … I’d never sleep. But Kraemer works, and it'd be nice if he didn't have a scheduled wake-up in the middle of every night on top of whenever else Calder decides he'd rather not be asleep. Our NP has helped us reconfigure our recipe for fortifying the breast milk so that Calder gets more calories per feed, thereby maintaining his total caloric intake per day, despite the reduction in feeding times. He’s been starting to spit up a little more anyhow as we've increased the volume of each feed, so perhaps his digestive system will prefer this method. We’ll soon find out.

Taking on the feeds

Getch and Grandad came to town this weekend, and Calder was ever so glad to see them! I’m not sure he left Getch’s arms for longer than a thirty-second stretch. (We suspect he was a little spoiled by the time they left!) Shortly before they arrived another little gift from them came in the mail: a Buzzy. Buzzy was designed to help ease the pain of being poked and prodded by numbing the area of the injection site via both cold and vibration. They tried it out at Calder’s appointment yesterday morning for his six-month immunizations and while it appeared to make some difference, I suppose there isn't much that can fully wipe away the prick of five needles.

Another preemie mom from our hospital recently shared with the group this post by another mom, in which she expresses how she wishes everyone hadn't always told her life was rosy after the NICU for all babies. I tried to take it to heart. In my mind, Calder has been rocking it. But he had a very early and very difficult start to life, and although I am optimistic, just like when we were still in the NICU, I want to be mentally prepared for anything. And cut him some slack.

That said, this coming week we have the G-tube mickey replacement and the swallow study: I've got my fingers crossed!