We basically spent the day watching the baby's pish bag fill up. When we arrived in the morning, it was below 100, and now its holding at 250 and increasing. (If you wish, you may take a moment and contemplate the idea that we are watching a plastic bag... fill with urine. So... we are watching urine flow. That's correct). We do believe Norman has been doing a great job at it, and we are rooting him on to keep it up.
This is all we know really. The ultrasound results came back around 345pm, They told us everything was fine with the kidneys. We asked what's next and they said they just want him to keep getting the fluids out of his body. So there you have it.
By the time we got back from candle lighting and dinner, it was the first time I noticed the baby is really blown up. We were warned that they blow up like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and that's not so far from the truth. The baby had skinny chicken legs when we checked in, and he had a small narrow face. Now his face is more like a big round ball, and he has large delicious pokeys. (Apparently, no tickling is allowed in the ICU... who knew?)
They put a strange cream on his eyes. I guess its to keep them hydrated since he doesn't move his eyelids at all, but its a little strange.
The baby is eating more now. About 10 cc's infused every couple hours. This is great. This means he's eating mother's milk now, and we are happy about this.
We had to bring our own bag of wipes. They seem to feel wiping his tush with a tissue would be comfortable, but we as parents, seem to feel different. We offered to sponsor a bag of wipes to be used for each wiping session. Social medicine, being what it is and all. I mean consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment in these rooms, but soft baby wipes is over budget. Go figure.
During the day we talk to the baby, we play music for him. We fix his blanket and straighten his hat. Much of the conversation between us and the nurses today was devoted to how parents react to babies in ICU that are sedated. Fraidy and I don't see many parents here during the day. Its a bizarre thought. We don't want to be farther away than 5 minutes at any time, and yet there are babies here that we have not ever seen their parents yet. One nurse said the parents: "call in once a day". To be fair, some kids are here for several months, but still. We are so thankful to our families and parents for watching and taking care of our three children at home - there is no doubt in our mind that without them we wouldn't be able to be here with the baby.
We're not huge fans of tonight's night nurse. Since I've been here, she hasn't walked in the room once. She was also trying to convince Fraidy earlier today to go home and be with her other kids. I guess there is an Israeli mentality at play here, but we don't have it.
As far as we can tell, in our vast medical knowledge (sarcasm) there's no reason to not take him off Dracrium and start getting him to move around a little. I imagine we will wait until the doctors examine him tomorrow. Shabbos I expect will be one of our less spiritually fulfilled shabbosim. I'm sure I'll have a blog post about it after Shabbos.
We lit three candles tonight in honor of the third night of channukah. It's sad to light without the kids.
That's all I got for tonight.
May we all hear only good news.
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