Day 5

Aside from a midnight pumping - we got a pretty good nights rest last night. And from the sounds of it, so did Lewis. Aside from a few short outbursts, he was pretty quiet all night.

Lauren's milk has started to come in pretty good, too. Its enough to keep him on the milk instead of formula now. When we went down to help feed him, Lewis was already awake and the nurse was changing his diaper. He had a pretty messy diaper (and continued to mess his dirty diaper as the nurse was changing him). We let her finish it up - hahaha. They had him taking 30 mL of milk this time. We fed him his bottle, but he didn't quite down the whole bottle. He kind of fell asleep before he was finished. The nurse checked with Dr. Kinney who said they may need to use a feeding tube to make sure he takes all of his food. We were pretty discouraged with this. All we want is for him to get better and then we get a little setback - he won't eat all his food.

So after we finished our visit with Lewis, Lauren and I went to grab some lunch. Lauren was so hungry she was shaking. I think it's the calorie output in the milk that made her so hungry - but she ate a lot at lunch, probably more than she ever did when she was pregnant! (And in case you were wondering - Lauren OKed this paragraph)

After lunch we headed out for the first time since Lewis was born. We made a trip to the mall so Lauren could get some better nursing clothes and also to the store to pick up some snacks and things.

We missed his 5:00 care but called in to see how he took his food. He downed it like a champ! We made it back to go to his 8:00 care time. We noticed right off the bat that he didn't have an IV in anymore. The nurse told us that they were trying to move his IV but could not get a new location to work. Dr. Kinney wrote it up to leave the IV out and to increase his feedings by 5 mL every 6 hrs. We did the usual: temp, diaper, and weigh. Before we fed Lewis the nurse went ahead and put a feeding tube in. Since he has been a little iffy with his feedings and they are going to be increased kind of quickly, she wanted to put it in. It ended up being ok because he didn't finish his 35 mL so they gravity fed him the rest. I'm still not quite sure which is better - no IV or no feeding tube. I guess we'll have to take what we can get now. We're going to go say goodnight to Lewis before we head to bed. Keep praying for the little guy - he's doing pretty well but still needs some help. Thanks - we'll talk tomorrow!