I went to visit Golda solo yesterday. It wasn't too bad since I got a great parking spot right at the end of the driveway. When I got upstairs the nurse was working on another baby so I was over there talking to her for a bit. She reported that Golda had another couple of episodes so they checked her caffeine level and found it low. They gave her a bolus dose (large dose at once) to increase it, then ordered her routine level increased as well. Her hematocrit was low so she received a transfusion of packed red blood cells. And they stopped her supplemental lipids. I then scrubbed and headed over to Golda. The new attending stopped me to discuss her care. He showed me her g-tube site and explained their concerns. I explained that it really was looking much better than it had been. He was happy to hear that since most of her care providers are new they weren't able to make that determination themselves. He also gave me some news that wasn't too welcome. Golda's surgeon, the expert on esophageal atresia reconstruction, is apparently in the military and has been called to active duty. He leaves for Iraq in six weeks (too soon for Golda to have her surgery) and won't be back for at least a year! That means someone else will be doing her reconstruction, possibly Dr. Dolgin, the head of pediatric surgery, which wouldn't be too worrisome for me. The attending said he would arrange a consult for us with whomever the team thought should take over her case. I then finally made it over to Golda and sat with her for all of three minutes before they closed the room for a new admission. I waited over an hour to get back in, but they said it would stay closed at least until shift change at 7 pm (which is when visiting hours end until 9 pm) so I left very disappointed.
The morning report for Golda was good. She had a good night with no more episodes - the new dose of caffeine is obviously doing the trick! She is now up to 15 ml of breast milk with human milk fortifier so I am hoping she will start putting on the grams now. She is up to 1374 g (3 lbs. 0.46 oz.) which is reassuring. She also got her blood transfusion and the nurse said is looking a lot less pale. Today is Tuesday and that means it's sibling visitation day so we will be going up to visit with Harry later on (photos to follow!).
We are getting into the swing of things with Leah and Micah. The main problem with our current schedule is that it leaves Jon about three hours a night to sleep! He is really starting to run on empty so we are going to have to re-think parts of this schedule. The hardest part for me is trying to fit in visiting Golda. With feedings every three hours, it's not like you can make a quick trip to the hospital in between so it really needs planning in advance.
We have each figured out little tricks to get both babies to eat a little faster so that's helped, especially with the nighttime feeds. I know that most people on the triplet blogs feed multiple babies at once to save time, but these guys are so tiny that I can't figure out how we could manage that now. Hopefully when they get bigger we can try it.
Okay, that's it for now. Here is one photo from this morning for you
and here is one from yesterday showing the BBB in action - that's Best Big Brother to the rest of you!
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