Finn's first slumber party!

Last night we moved up to the 8th Progressive unit floor at Levine's Children's Hospital.  This is our LAST step prior to being discharged home.  The nurses up here have multiple patients in varying areas of the unit and they strongly encouraged us to stay with Finn as much as possible so that we are doing as much of the cares and feeds as possible to get prepared for going home.  Sooo.... Finn and I had a slumber party last night!  I was so excited to be able to stay with him, hold him, pat him to sleep, change his diapers and feed him, ya know normal parenting stuff that we normally take for granted!  Their biggest goal that has been expressed to us is weight gain and adequate amounts of feeds at each feeding interval (basically every 3 hours).  Finn started stirring at about 2 1/2 hours through the night and he has expressed a HUGE dislike of wet diapers, so I would wake him up and he would exercise his lungs during his diaper change and then he drank his bottles like a champ.  They had said that they usually have a feeding tube in the babies after surgery to feed remainder of bottles that they do not drink.  Unfortunately/fortunately Finn pulled his feeding tube out before he was trasferred up to the 8th floor.  The team they had strong faith in Finn to be a great eater, so they held off placing another feeding tube to see how he did with the bottles presented to him.  They basically have to treat him as a brand new newborn at this point and slowly increase his feeds since his tummy is not the true size of a 10-12 day old. Finn drank 30 ml (1 oz) or close to it, like a champ all 3 feeds last PM.  We have officially avoiding the need for a feeding tube!

This AM during morning rounds with the Nurse Practitioner, Cardiologist and Nurse, we had more good news!  Another chest x ray was taken and Finn's left lower lobe was much improved, still a little junk in there, but improved.  We were able to take off the oxygen and he is starting to look more and more like our sweet baby boy with less and less "accessories"!!!  Finn's overall continuous stats have been great (heart rate, blood oxygen levels and respiratory rate-- all monitored 24/7).  Speech therapy came to evaluate Finn's suck/swallow/breathe coordination.  She said overall he is not at risk for aspiration when he drinks (liquid going into his lungs when he swallows), but his breathing does get shallow and he fatigues before he is done drinking, so we need to work on his endurance.  We changed him to a slower flow nipple for his bottles and this should help him actually coordinate his suck / swallow better and then also decrease fatigue which in turns gets him to drink more.

Late this AM we went home for another refresh of clean clothes and we were in time to go and pick up Olivia from school.  She was so excited to see us and had so much to tell us!  It is so refreshing to see her and talk with her about everything she has been up to the last few days, oh to be a 3 year old again!  Olivia definitely tried to persuade her daddy to stay with her at home, "Mommy can go take care of baby Finny, right daddy?"  It is very sweet to see their bond!  While we were gone this afternoon, Finn continued to be a rockstar milk drinker, he downed a 45ml (1.5 ounces) bottle!  They also did another echocardiogram of Finn's heart today to get a baseline to compare to when he continues with his cardiologist follow ups in the future.  If Finn continues to eat (I have been advised to wake him up every 2.5 hours through the night to be sure he eats enough to gain weight) like the strong ox that he is, he just needs to have a consistent 0.5 - 1 ounce weight gain daily over the next few days to qualify as "nutritionally sound" and "safe for discharge".  I have faith that we will be home with Finley before the end of the week!

Similar to his sister when she was a baby - Finn has a very solid scowl - and he's not afraid to use it.

SCOWL!!!!!!

xoxoxo - Dana