I made it to the hospital in time for rounds and the neonatologists and surgeons are pleased with Carter's progress and are ready to move forward. He won't be extubated until they wean a little more on the morphine and versed--hopefully by the end of the week. I also heard during rounds the approval to begin feeds!!! When they first begin to feed, they use an NG tube placed through his nose down into his stomach. They slowly add food directly into the stomach via the tube from a syringe. It'll be a while before he's actually feeding by mouth. They gave him the first amount of milk around 9:00pm and three hours later, there was nothing left in his stomach. What a champ! He's already processed it, without leaving a residual and without aspiration! This is great news, especially for his first feed, and now we wait patiently to see if the food makes it out the other end :) Here's Carter "eating" for the first time:
Brad went home for a few days to go to work, so I've been hanging out with Carter by myself. This morning, his nurse asked me if I was ready to hold him for the first time EVER, but I promised Brad I wouldn't hold Carter without him. This came as a surprise because we thought we'd have to wait until he was extubated, but the arterial line was removed yesterday, so they were ready to let us get our hands on him. I called Brad and told him to get back ASAP. We weren't able to hold him when he was born because he had to be rushed to the NICU to be stablized and intubated, so this is a moment we've been waiting on for 6 very long weeks. As soon as Brad got back tonight, we rushed up to see him. He was swaddled for the first time since birth and then handed to me. It was so amazing to be able to hold him. Of course, Carter was not at all impressed. He slept through the whole thing, peeking once or twice to see what all the commotion was about. He had been awake all afternoon, so I guess it was time for him to get some rest. Here's a slideshow with the song we've been waiting to use for it, so make sure your volume is up. If it doesn't work, please leave a comment and let me know so I can fix it.
