Saturday, March 6, 2010

Food, food and more food

Bodie is having a GREAT day! He tolerated the Vapotherm so well, they weaned him down off of it, so that he is now on the nasal cannula only! YAY!!! And that means they can start his feeds up again via the NG tube (double yay)! They'll start him back at where he was a couple of days ago (they had to stop the feeds in anticipation of extubation - then, they wait until they're stable being extubated before resuming feeds) and then slowly increase the amount of breastmilk he gets up to full feedings. They go really slow with feeding hypoplasts since a lot of them have gut issues (due to the weird blood flow in utero) and they don't want too much energy going to the gut. So, we'll have a slow road - but it's so exciting to be so close to working on feeding issues - within a few days, we'll hopefully be able to start giving him a bottle!!! Praise God!


And in related news, THANK YOU so much to all of you who have brought us meals, given us care packages, etc. - I'm working on thank-you notes to all of you (don't have quite the free time that I had thought I'd have!), but rest assured that we are incredibly grateful for your generosity! A number of you who live locally have asked about helping with a meal rotation - if you'd like to help, our wonderful friend Natalie has set up a meal rotaton. Here's the link: http://www.brownbearsw.com/freecal/Bennetts?Date=2010-03-01;Op=ShowIt - just go anywere it says "Meal Needed" and enter your info. If you need our address or anything, just shoot me an email. :-)

And thanks more than anything for the prayers and good thoughts! We know that's why our little fighter is doing so well - please, please keep them coming!

Amy

4 comments:

  1. What an amazingly blessed day!!!!

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  2. I missed the last post! YAY FOR NO VENT!!! How incredibly exciting!!! I am so happy for you!!! He is even more handsome without the vent. He looks like such a little guy in his picture!!! He is going to rock from here on out!

    Why can't you breastfeed him instead of a bottle? I hope this isn't too personal of a question. I was just hoping that the Dr's would encourgage you to breastfeed if you wanted to. So if you do want to, go ahead and ask when you can start. I know at first they wanted me to give a bottle to LJ so they could monitor his intake but once they were aware that we was taking in enough, I made it clear that I wanted to be able to nurse him. So don't be afraid to ask if it is what you want to do!

    I am so glad you have a meal rotation with your friends. How incredible is that? VERY! You can tell that Bodie has reached out to so many. he is so inspirational! I will tell you again, God has HUGE plans for that boy...H...U...G...E!!

    Prayer continue!

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  3. Thanks so much ladies! Bekah, there's a lot of reasons they don't allow HLHS babies to go directly to the breast. Probably the biggest is that they have to be so stinking careful about their electrolyte and calorie balances, which they can only do if they're monitoring their exact intake via bottle. The other thing is that HLHS kids are incredibly fragile between the first and second surgeries, so they don't want them to have to expend any more energy than they have to (it's just too taxing on their little hearts) and theoretically, nursing is harder than drinking from a bottle. BUT, I've made it abundantly clear that I want to start breastfeeding absolutely as early as possible - so, assuming he tolerates the feeds well, they intend to let me try to breastfeed (hopefully in another week or so) and see how he does!

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  4. We're so thankful to come home to good news! Bodie is precious, wish I could hold him...wish you could hold him more. I just love the pics, thanks for taking the time to let us in on this incredible journey. Love, Erin

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