Day 202 - Oh What a Night...

Tuesday, July 20th, 2021

If Mom wasn't here, what would have happened? Would we even know what went down?

Forgotten Feeds...

First, it's 10pm Monday night and the feed pumping is alarming. Mom let the new nurse know that the alarm is going off and she needs more milk. This is a continuous feed. She let's Mom know that she actually didn't have any thawed but it should only take 5 minutes. At 11pm, she pops her head in and asks if we need anything. Mom reminds her that we are still waiting on the milk. She then realized she forgot again. So James didn't get fed his 40mls that hour. This was also the time he did his LTV trial on night shift.

No Vent Heaters...

At 8:45am, Mom noticed the Vent Heater was off and his circuit was cold. The heater runs warm oxygen through the tubing. Humidification is needed by all patients requiring mechanical ventilation via an artificial airway. Heated humidifiers operate actively to increase the heat and water vapor content of inspired gas. The RT forgot to turn the heater back on after James was put back on the Servo at 11pm.

Wasted Breastmilk

Too much breastmilk was thawed out and therefore would expire before it could be used. It was about 80mls that was tossed. 😭 Very frustrating.

Burned Baby Feet

In the morning Mom noticed that James had a pulse ox burn on his foot. To avoid burns the pulse ox probe needs to be rotated to each foot every 4 hours. Poor baby!

On a positive note James did his second day of LTV trials which he did 2 hours during day shift in 2 hours during night shift. He did well! 

Dad came to the hospital to relieve mom for a few hours and so she could organize the frozen breastmilk in our two deep freezers at home. This is a pretty impossible task for only one person. It was quite a disaster for 3½ hours, bottles all over the place defrosting in the Florida heat. Mom will need to finish this on Saturday night. We are currently using breastmilk from the beginning of the year and the milk that Mom is currently pumping is going into our deep freezer at home. So every other day we need to bring in about 20 bottles from 6 months ago. James also recently switched to exclusively breastmilk and removed all formula. Mom was trying to wean because she will not be able to keep up with pumping and washing bottles while being James' nurse 24/7. However James will be taking about 28oz a day, so Mom will need to pick her supply back up. Well that is the goal at least! Even though it may seem that we have a lot of breast milk stored away in our deep freezers it is crazy how fast we will go through those.

P.S. You can email James your love and support as often as you’d like. Mom and Dad read these emails to James as they come in. We all love them! JamesWestonAbramowitz@gmail.com