Will had a better day today. The occupational therapist, Margaret, came to work with us again for the 2 PM feeding and said he's made noticable improvements in interaction, muscle tone, rooting behavior and a couple other things in the last week. She had us try the football hold, I've been using cross-cradle since that's what the nurses and lactation specialist told me would be best. The football hold worked SO MUCH better! Apparently that's usually the easiest for larger-busted women, and I'm definitely in that category, especially lately. It put Will at a better angle and made it much easier to control his position so he latched on much easier and I could see what was going on without sitting at a strange angle.
He's really getting stronger, he kept it up much longer today than usual. He's been on room air through the canula the last 2 days, with bumps up while stressed then reduced back down to room air. During the 2nd nursing session he was saturating in the high 90s to 100 so when we were finished I asked the nurse if we could remove his canula to see how he does. He's had it removed several times fairly recently and did well for awhile then started getting desaturation episodes, it's a matter of trial and error getting him off of it and every time it comes off he gets a little closer to getting used to it being gone and not needing it anymore. He did very well without it! It was removed about 3:30, and he was still doing just fine without it when we left at 7! Look closely at the picture of just his face, notice the missing tube? :D He still has the feeding tube though. The other picture was taken when I first got there today. The only downside today was that he continues to have occasional bradys, not much in the way of desaturation episodes alone. He did have a few, but I think they were due more to irritation, the sticky that holds his feeding tube in place is wearing out so the tube was moving in and out of his nose which really annoys him, and when he's annoyed he desats a little.
I went to the infant CPR class today, which was mostly a joke. It took less than an hour, we watched a short video and practiced briefly on dolls. I don't think I could do CPR with the "skills" learned there, luckily that was just a refresher for me and a mandatory class if he comes home on monitors so I wanted to get it out of the way. I've taken several day-long CPR classes, including an intensive one when I worked at a childcare center but it had been a couple years.
Justin's car broke again today with the same problem, so I suspect there is an underlying cause for the fuse blowing. We couldn't figure out which fuse it was so I showed him a trick I saw the dealer do to override the safety feature and get it out of park and we drove to the dealership (I had my car at the hospital too, luckily!) and dropped it off to be fixed again.
We stopped at Shopko on the way home since I'd seen an ad that they had a baby swing I had on my registry and it was on sale! It's the Power Plus swing, it can be plugged in or use batteries and it's only about $10-20 more than a regular swing. I figure we'll save that much in batteries alone! I've made a list of things to get done around here, projects and spring cleaning type stuff, so it's easier for me to decide what to do when I'm looking for chores. I'm working my way along it and much more satisfied with the condition of the house now. I'm also still producing a huge amount of milk according to Will's nurses.. apparently not many moms actually are able to get the amount recommended on the chart in the pump room, it says anything over 750 ML/day is in the ideal range. My best day so far was yesterday, when I got 900!
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