The Hare And The Tortoise

Spoiler Alert: The Tortoise Wins The Race

We have been preaching since day one to the ICN that they need to take it slow with Wyatt since he was an asymmetrically growth restricted baby whose heart and brain received the majority of blood in utero in order to sustain vital functions. Thus, his other organs and system were stunted in growth and development. I believe they are finally catching on. We called a few times last night to get updates whenever they would do a heel stick to check his glucose levels. Over the night he was able to hold his blood sugar levels just above an acceptable range. Again, this morning we called a couple times, and he started getting back to the type of numbers that were more normal. The doctor gave orders to increase Wyatt's breast milk and decrease his IV fluids again but at a much lower rate. While Randi and I were at the there tonight, the nurse checked his glucose again, and he appeared to be responding well.

Over the next 4 days, they will decrease his IV fluids and increase his feeds to make sure that he is, at least, getting the same amount of overall intake into his system, using a formula determined by his body weight. After that, they should hold everything steady for a day or two to see how well he tolerates continuous feeds without the IV before trying to wean him off of them. Next, they will try to him on continuous feeds for 2 hours and off for one hour, persistently checking his glucose levels. If he remains stable they will then have him on continuous feeds for one hour and off for two hours, until they titrate him off continuous feeds completely. The ultimate goal is to get him accustomed to 3 hour feeds, so they can introduce the bottle. This is all assuming that the doctor doesn't get a wild hair and do something drastic again. It is understandable to see him having such progress for how small he is and want to try to push him a little harder, but we feel that the grade on this slope needs to be very gradual.

UPDATE: Since I drafted this post last night, Randi called the ICN in the wee hours of the morning to check on his latest blood glucose level. They were 81, the highest they have been in days. As the recommended schedule has been presented, they will decrease his IV fluid rate today before noon and check him again for stability. We are going up there a couple times today as a tag-team to check on him, and we should have another update tonight.