Sunday July 8th

Elijah is still on the bilirubin lights today, his numbers came down slightly to 13.6 but they want them lower. He doesn't seem to mind being on them at all, the glasses don't even bother him. Everything is still coming back good with his blood culture. Since I was positive for GBS they have been giving him antibiotics in his IV but they stopped them yesterday since he had yet to get anything positive in his blood work.

We did talk to the Dr at his morning feeding, he said that everything Elijah is doing right now is completely normal for a baby born at 35 weeks. Unfortunately the things he needs to work on with his feedings is just something it will take time to learn, he isn't supposed to be here doing these things yet. It can take time or it could just click like a light bulb, but its not anything we can do for him, he has to learn on his own. The Dr gave us our first estimate of length of stay today, not what I was expecting but we will deal with it. He said we could be looking at the third week of July for coming home, so somewhere between the 15th and 20th.
After not taking his full bottle at his 7 PM feeding last night he did great with his late night feedings as well as his early morning ones today and took everything. We got to see him at his 10 AM feeding, his 7 PM and 10 PM. When we came in at 7 to feed him we met his day nurse as she was leaving, she said Elijah's IV had went bad and they had to replace it. Unfortunately he takes after his momma and they had a hard time sticking him so they had to place it in his head. I knew they did this to babies and that it was a possibility if they kept having problems with his lines. Unfortunately daddy did not know they did this to babies and he had a hard time with it. The nurse assured us it didn't bother him and was actually a good place for it since he moved so much.

At his 10 PM feeding it was not such a good visit, his usual night nurse was gone and the nurse filling in was less than warm and friendly. I have actually seen snakes friendly that she was! She was going to another unit at 11 and told us we would have to cut the visit short so she could give report, normally this would have been no big deal. After we feed Elijah he usually passes out immediately, of course tonight he was really restless and cried when we put him in his bed. Its hard enough to leave your baby in a cold hospital but to leave them with someone that's cold and unfriendly killed me. I asked her to please call if he didn't settle down and I would come back up, then we left and I cried the whole way out the hospital and on the way home. Steve was wonderful and held my hand and told me it was OK. I called about an hour later and the second nurse said he was sleeping soundly and seemed fine. I also called after his night feedings and he was doing well, I am hoping we don't have her as our nurse again tomorrow night!

Here are some pictures from Sunday...