Johnny Update-Day 6

What a difference 24 hours makes! I am doing much better. Still very tired, but I am getting the rest I need--John, too. I will be discharged this evening and plan to never step foot on this floor again as a patient. I wouldn't mind coming back to visit my nurses, though. They have been nothing short of amazing and I've developed close relationships with several of them. You do that when you spend enough time in one spot!

The best thing is John has learned how to care for my wound. It's not pretty--at all. I do NOT have the stomach for any gore--I have to cover my eyes when I see any of it in movies or on TV. So when I took a look at it yesterday with the mirror, I about lost it. I'm much better now, especially when the nurses tell me it's actually not that big or deep and that they've seen much worse. John watched the nurse do it last night and then did it this morning with supervision. He did awesome! I'm so proud of him--and just us in general. This is not easy. His main concern is that he's not causing me any pain. It's uncomfortable but as with everything he does, he took great care when he did it. He'll do it one more time with supervision this evening before I'm discharged and then we're on our own after that. We'll make it though. We are a team.

Johnny is doing really good! We just got back from an afternoon visit. Docs have decided to stop phototherapy since his Billy level has remained stable rather than rise. Their going to give him a chance to see if he can continue to work it out of his system on his own. They've also decided to stop the IV fluids. Their target is for him to eat 28cc every 3 hours and he had been getting 7cc of fluid every hour via the IV. Sometimes he'll take his full feeds, sometime he'll take only 1/3. I'm very excited to see if he's more interested in eating on a consistent basis now that he's not getting any IV fluids. At present, I'm pumping 60cc every session--double of what he consumes per feeding. Pumping is nowhere near as enjoyable as nursing is, but it is SO worth it for him. We'll defiantly work of latching once he comes home. That will be one of our main focuses.

We hope everyone enjoyed the video we posted--that was from our visit last night. He responds so well to our voices--we love that about him, among many, many other things :)