It Never Ends

Today has turned about to be a significant setback in the quest to get Owen out of the hospital and home where he belongs. He has lost 40 grams since yesterday. This is not a good thing since he managed to lose double the weight he had gained the day before and the doctors were not event content with the gain when it did happen.

What does this mean? Well, at least one more week in the NICU while they run a series of studies on his digestive system and major organs to see if they can find any cause for the mass quantity of spit up that seems to occur during every feeding. They will be reattaching him to an IV to feed him. He will continue to bottle feed but only a very small amount (15 cc's) and the remainder of the nourishment will come from the IV. They ran an ultrasound of his stomach yesterday and the tentative results found nothing conclusive as to why he is getting ill. They also did another head ultrasound and did not find any major changes in the brain that they feel would be contributing to the problem. The UW radiologists have not read the scans yet so nothing definitive has been said. I am a little concerned why they have not seen a reduction in the amount of blood in his brain. They had estimated that it would take about a month for the blood to dissipate and then they would be screening him for hydrocephalus. Tomorrow will be the 2 week mark (oh my, we have been in this darn hospital for 2 weeks!) shouldn't a large amount of blood be gone by now? They are also planning an upper GI to check for digestive issues. They said it will not be fun for him, but at least it is not invasive (yet). We will have a whole new series of specialists getting involved with Owen's case and that will mean even more opinions and greater confusion.

Owen has continued to be much less fiesty than usual. When he is awake, he is wide awake and follows you with his eyes and does the things babies do. The difference is that he does not cry a great deal or even seem to mind the constant poking and prodding (they drew blood yesterday and he did not care). Of course, as many times as he has been poked in prodded in his first few days of life...he probably is used to it. We are hoping once he gets a little bit more nutrition in his system, it will rile him up a bit and give him back some oomph.

Brendan has all of his feist, Owen's feist and then some. He has been a beastly little fire cracker. He has been attempting his version of behaving under stress....which yields interesting (and sometimes publicly embarrassing results). We just take into effect that his whole lifestyle has been altered also and he needs to cope. Unfortunately, with the decline in Owen's progress the last few days....the hospital has to now become part of our lifestyle since it will not be going away any time soon...mwah, mwah, mwah.

There are a number of results that need to come in before we came make a definitive game plan as to how we are going to handle all of this. Obviously we will be spending a majority of our time in Madison and will probably having to stay overnight also since it is not very cost effective or logical to commute constantly. I will have to incorporate my job into this hot mess somewhere also. I am going to ponder that for a day or so. I will start browsing for a good muzzle and leash for Brendan...the adventure will continues and as always, we will keep you posted.