July 6

Will recieved a blood transfusion last night after we'd left.

I'm a bit upset about that, it had been mentioned that transfusions are often needed for preemies that tiny, because they can't produce their own blood very well yet and they require frequent blood draws for tests that help keep him alive. It had not been mentioned though that he needed one, at least not yet, and we returned this morning and asked if anything interesting had happened and were told nothing had. Then this afternoon his doctor mentioned casually that he had a blood transfusion last night! I don't know about the rest of you, but I consider that a major thing and I've asked to be informed of everything happening to him so I'm pretty upset they didn't tell us!

If we'd known he needed one that soon we would have had the family try to donate right away when he was born so the blood would be ready and I'd told the doctors already we want to donate from within the family if possible. So he agreed to get us some paperwork to get family tested and hopefully one of us can supply it if he needs more. The doctor also agreed to try to use blood from the same donor if he needs more in the meantime, it should be available for another week, to minimize how many people he's exposed to. So at least that's something.

A couple of his toes have also turned black. They think it's because the IV line thing in his umbilical cord that they use to draw blood was causing problems, apparently that's not uncommon, and they usually place a line somewhere else and remove that one. They tried to place another in his arm today but couldn't get it placed so they will try again this evening and in the meantime they removed the umbilical one and he'll just be without a blood draw location for a while. They used a nitrous cream on them to dialate the blood vessels, hopefully that and the tube change will be enough to save his toes.

He's had 2 doses of the heart medication so far but no improvement on his murmur. He gets one more dose tonight and they'll re-evaluate him tomorrow. Hopefully there will be enough improvement to avoid surgery but we really don't know yet. The doc wasn't able to say how the odds look one way or another. Hmm what else..

He gained some weight! Only 1/2 ounce, but that's gain after he's been slowly losing weight since birth so I'm considering it excellent news.

I'm Exhausted, still weepy and having some issues from my own medical junk, saw my doc today who told me the doc who took care of me while she was away seriously under-prescribed my painkillers so she increased my dosage, ahhh.. so that's interesting news, I've been in a lot of pain for no good reason. Hopefully now I'll sleep a little better. I've been waking up gasping every time I shift in my sleep because moving around in that position hurts so much, fun stuff....

Milk has also come in well, doc says I need to start waking up at night to pump on a feeding schedule. Getting a nice supply stored at the NICU for when he's ready to eat, at least that's satisfying, I feel like I can do something for him, and the staff has been very supportive. Guess that's it for now. No new exciting pictures, he was mostly covered up today and nothing looks new.