Yay for Poop!

I kind of feel bad for Ethan when he reads this when he's older, but seriously....Yay for POOP!! He had a few good ones today....even one that went up his back and got all over the plastic dressing covering his epidural and the dressing had to be changed because it was a disaster (thankfully the insertion site was totally clean and dry).

The docs decided to start feeding Ethan, cut his Fentanyl in half and changed his breathing setting to only have a back-up on 2 breaths. We kind of feel it was too many changes all at once because it was an up and down kind of day. It would have been better if one change happened at a time so that when he started fussing we'd have a better idea of which change caused the discomfort.....but it is also nice that they have faith in Ethan and want to challenge him.

There was yet another problem with the PICC Line in Ethan's leg....it pretty much stopped working! So for about an hour or so his sedative and pain med was slowed down quite a bit. They used some sort of drug that they just put in the IV (enough to sit in the tubing on the outside and not go right into Ethan's body) and it broke up the clot that must have formed on the insertion site of the line. Then it got sucked back out and the line was working again.

The RTs also changed the tape on Ethan's face holding in the intubation tube because it was starting to come a bit loose from saliva and was moving a bit, and was causing some irritation which made Ethan need to be suctioned quite a few times (because he can't cough himself).

And the IV in Ethan's head came out today!

So with the changes and the slowed medications Ethan had some moments of elevated heart rate and some troubles with breathing, but all in all it was an okay day.

We'll post a video of him sucking on the breathing tube tomorrow....it squeaks. Very cute!

Thanks to Grandma, Cassie and Kelly for coming to visit!