Vigorous and Appropriate

Didn't get a chance to post anything yesterday because we fell asleep as soon as we got home...Ethan has been doing well the past 2 days.

The reason for the title is that Vigorous and Appropriate are two words we like to hear! They mean that Ethan is doing well and acting/reacting appropriately to whatever is going on. 

Today was a big day and proved the point on being vigorous! At 6:30am Ethan decided he was done with his breathing tube and apparently pulled it out himself! No worries - he is completely fine - it was going to come out today anyway. His urinary catheter came out and his IJ (Internal Jugular IV) also came out. Although, they did need to put a new regular IV into Ethan's head because he is still getting regular doses of antibiotics. His sedative and fentanyl were stopped today and he is just getting regular doses of tylenol and morphine through his NG. 

And after EIGHT DAYS of not being able to...I FINALLY got to hold Ethan!! :)

Today, they also decided to restart feeding Ethan. His belly measured 37.5cm around this morning (which is the smallest it's been in a looooong time) and then after about 4 hours it was up to 38.6cm....it's expected that it will get a bit bigger because he's being fed, but this will be watched very closely because if it keeps getting bigger and if it gets hard then the feeding will stop again because it means his intestines are enlarging because they can't handle the food yet.

He was acting appropriately by interacting with us while we visited this morning. He was a bit agitated which was likely due to all of the changes today, but he settled down around 4:00pm for a snooze so we came home to get some things done around the house because it sounds like Ethan will be going back to the regular ward soon....which is good because it means he's making progress, but it also means that one of us needs to be at the hospital 24/7 again because he won't have a nurse watching him all the time or be behind locked doors. 

We may not be able to update the blog as often because we won't have access to the Internet in the other ward, but we will do our best.

We're heading back to the hospital soon, we'll let you know how the feeding is going later on tonight.