After surgery RT has been fairly stable. His oxygen percent needs have remained between 46-55%. We have they have been raising his feed amount about every 3 Feedings sincr the morning after his surgery at 8. He is now to full Feedings of 28cc fortified with prolactin rather than HMF.

Today he had another follow up echo cardiohram and an xray. Everything looks ok so our hospital contacted Swedish. At night rounds when the doctor came around we  we found out she spoke to the neonatologist working tonight up at sweedish

and they are accepting RT back! We are getting sent back around 10 am tomorrow!

I asked when the transport team is coming and she told us she thought they would just bring him up there. They don’t realize Swedish has a transport team. She will talk to them again and figure it out.

I was told one normal way to transfer a patient is the accepting unit usually sends the transport team to look everything over before moving and accepting the patient. It makes more sense to me.

Most of the nurses here are confused as to why we want to go back.

1. RT is familiar with more of the nurses and Dr’s That have been taking care of him since birth at Swedish they all know him well, and love him and understand us as parents.

2. They don’t know much about Swedish at first hill and think it is a smaller NICU with a lower level of care.

They are wrong, it is a level IV NICU, they just dont do PDA ligation anymore.

3. Momma has friends we do know that are in Seattle and within a few blocks of Swedish.

4. Pods vs private room. Swedish has pods. I feel like a room with multiple nurses in it has a faster reaction time to his alarms in a crisis, vs a nurse getting a little beep on a phone while in another room. We feel safer at Swedish.

We have had several times I don’t think the nurse knew RT dropped low when he did, one time he got to 69 spo2 without a nurse or respiraroty therapist coming, he was able to recover on his own, and only went down because he was holding his breath but it would have been more reassuring having someone atleast come check if every thing was ok.

It’s also easier to build a friendship with nurses and know them better when you’re in the same room with them too! This is important when we will be here for so long.

5. Because. Swedish hospital is better.

RT has had good urine output but not much poo.

His belly contunes to grow, bigger than we have ever seen.  We expressed our concern.  The largest it got at Swedish was 27.75 here we are up to 30.5. It is still soft.

To me in his xray today it looks like we lost recruitment in left lung and I cant quite count as many ribs on both sides. His intestines look bloated. They don’t seem concerned and want to comtinue feeds. It’s odd, they don’t check residual here to see how much food he has left to digest. They also don’t vent after feeds to let out excess pressure or gas build ups. Each hospital has different protocol, we have been adapting and  the nurses have gotten friendlier. Maybe they were stressed out about meeting a new baby as much as I was stressed out about his surgery and a new hospital. Thankfully he has been able to have some of the same nurses each days.

RT was more awake today than I think we have seen him. He is only on 1.5 of fentanol now. He watched us at cares. One of the cares me and mom did pretty much all by ourselves, as I was talking to him he decided to look and see who was talking, he turned his head almost all the way towards me before I was able to stop him midline. This is where we put him for his position change. He liked it.

We got a phone call at 2255 tonight.  RT had a large event,  he spit up some food and aspirated it. His heart rate got down to the 70’s and his spo2 went down to the 40’s. After the event he is on 46% oxygen now and doing ok, not sure if it’s adrenaline keeping his needs low or if it didn’t effect him much.

Going to try and sleep. I hope I don’t get any more scary phone calls tonight. This is about one a week.

I’m so proud of my boy for everything he has done so far, he is one tough little guy.