This is what it's like to be in the hospital with a baby. One day one medical personnel tells you one thing. Then the next day another medical personnel tells you something different. You expect one thing to happen, and it doesn't. Then you expect another thing to happen and maybe it does, but it's still not what you thought it would be like. So it feel like everything is up in the air and it's never going to come down.
Yesterday was your classic roller coaster. Ups and downs. We are currently in a bit of a dip. I'm hoping that things start going up again.
Johnny really turned a corner last night. Thanks to all of you who were lifting him up in prayer. He's fever broke, his pain level seemed significantly lower, and he was sleeping pretty soundly. He even gave his papa a great big smile this morning! We had heard some gas and the night nurse said she heard some gas boubles in his stomach. So we were really excited to be given the ok to start feeding him. But when the surgeon came by (very early) in the morning he said he'd like to see a poop before feeding him. I know that's what we were originally told, but having the doctor yesterday tell us that gas was enough activity to begin feeding sounded so great! It was a major disappointment to go back to the original plan. Since Johnny had perked up quite a bit he was more actively trying to nurse and getting very frustrated that he couldn't. I didn't want to make it worse by holding him so he spent most of the morning with his papa.
My parents came by to deliver some morning coffee, and we all prayed for poop. Then, low and behold, it came! Around 11:00 in the morning Alex felt a rumble as Johnny was sitting on his lap the smell was not going away. Poop! He did it! And we were changing our first poopy diaper. We actually changed four poopy diapers there in about 5 minutes time because it just kept coming!
Our nurse was just as excited as we were and she suggested we go ahead and try nursing! Nursing Johnny was the best part of our stay so far. He was so content and quickly fell asleep. After about an hour we decided we try a little more to see how his stomach would handle it, but right before I sat down to nurse him he threw up. Not just spit-up, projectile vomit! He's never done anything like that before and it was really scary to see. It was also very frustrating that his system couldn't handle breast milk. Breast milk is supposed to be good for everything! Liquid gold! But not this time. After two days of not eating and having his digestive tract completely shut down he couldn't hold it down.
We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get Johnny to drink Pedialyte and apple juice and then watch him throw it up. He was becoming more and more exhausted. The strain from vomiting was causing the sight of the incision to hurt. He was becoming pretty lethargic. It was worrisome, mostly because it reminded me of the way he was acting shortly after he was born, when things were really bad.
To finish off the evening his second IV blew out. Because his veins are hard to find they took us down to the Emergency Department to get a new one. (I guess the nurses down there are better at finding veins?) We were down there for an hour and Johnny was so tired he was falling asleep even though he bring stuck with a needle.
I thought this display of super exhaustion would mean we would all get a good nights rest. But we didn't. Johnny slept about 3 hours. He was very uncomfortable, I think it was gas. He's continued to have poopy diapers which is good! But it's going to take a couple weeks for him to get used to the feeling of using his entire intestine.
Hoping to keep some food down today!