We're out of the ICU!

This is a bit of a late update, because I didn't really feel like spending time on a post yesterday. Instead, I had a decently busy day, what with Mom's arrival by train at 10:30, lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory with two sisters, a fiancee, a friend, and, of course, Mom, then gospel meeting, and Tanner's departure by plane! He's back home, now, back at work, where I'm sure the poor guy is being hounded by "How's he doing?" questions. They're a bunch of very cool guys, there...some of which have also been through long hospital stays with their own kids.

Anyway, Saturday night, long after we had gone home for the evening, they moved us out of the CICU! (That's the cardiac version of the regular ICU). Two stellar points to mention here: the first being that we didn't have to move our stuff, because we weren't there...some poor nurse got stuck with that, apparently! The second is that the rules are way more relaxed, here! We were really lucky and managed to land ourselves a single room! Not sure how that happened, but I'm not about to question it. And now, with the relaxed rules, we're allowed more than one visitor at a time (no more than three in the room at once in the ICU) as long as we keep it under twenty at a time, nurse David informed us. Also, no one jumped on us when we brought our Starbucks breakfast into the room, which is a huge no-no, where we come from. Oh, and our new room is WAY closer to the main entrance, and the elevator to get there is conveniently located across the hall from Starbucks.

Essentially, life is good. Very good.

More changes, down on the floor, include higher patient to nurse ratios. In the ICU we had about one nurse per two patients, and the days after surgery, we actually had our own (not gonna lie, that was actually kind of cool). Here, each nurse is responsible for three, or occasionally four patients, so a little more responsibility is placed on the parents. More diaper changes, for one, but we also get to "handle" him more on our own. We don't have to call a nurse every time we want to pick him up!

So now that we're on the floor, our goal is to get him gaining weight and make sure he's feeding well so that they can send us home in good conscience. So we've got him on a feeding schedule, working him back up to the feeds he was getting before the surgery. He was taking about two ounces (60cc), and now we're back up to about 50cc, on the bottle. They have also been fortifying his milk, because healing takes a lot of energy...more than just growing and sleeping, which is what breast milk is best designed for. He can't physically eat enough in volume to get the calories he needs. So, out of his eight feeds a day, five are bottles, and three are from me.

Ahem...notice anything missing?!
Oxygen tube is finally gone, on a trial basis!

He is still nursing really well, even after the surgery (did I mention that in another post? Seems like I might have, but I can't remember, and don't feel like going back to check), but now, as we're trying to get him to a certain volume with his feeds, we have to weigh him before and after nursing to get accurate measurements. Apparently, he tends to get more when he nurses than when he takes a bottle! His last feed yesterday evening was a full two and a half ounces, or 75cc!

In other news, he's stolen the hearts of another batch of nurses, now, and apparently gets special cuddle time at night, just 'cause he's so gosh-darned cute. I can't really blame them. He is something of a doll.