This is a long one...

A really, really long one. So if you just want to skip to the end to see the pictures, feel free! Again, what a crazy couple of weeks we have had. Lots of ups and then lots of downs. Little Baby Davey initally was doing really well after his first round of antibiotics. They kept him on three different medications for 7 days and during that time he was awake and alert and just doing great. They started feeding him again as well. It's a very slow process-they started at 3 mLs every six hours (one teaspoon=5mls) then bumped it up to every three hours, then started increasing it by 1 mL every six hours. He initially needed a little help pooping, but after only one suppository he also started having some good poops all on his own. All this meant he was digesting his food and that everything was going great. On Friday afternoon I came back from the hospital so excited about everything. He was awake and alert with me, he was already up to 21 mLs (his goal is 32), he had a big poop all by himself, yay yay!! Then Friday night Josh and I went to the hospital together and things just went downhill. When we got there we asked to hold him so the nurse took his vitals first. He had a temperature of 100.4 and just did not look good. His temperature probe had come off so the nurse assumed his incubator had heated too high. So we took him out and held him anyway and he was seriously on fire. We checked his temp again and now he was up to 102. So they called the doctor and she decided that it was most likely another infection. This meant blood draws again, as well as a lumbar puncture and a urine sample. The lumbar puncture involved a needle into his spinal cord to rule out meningitis and a urine sample involved a catheter of course. My poor poor baby boy. They gave him a sedative, but my experience with sedatives is that they don't take away the pain at all, just make it so you can't kick the doctor (more of THAT story to come later). I just pray he didn't feel too much. They immediately started him on antibiotics again and also stopped all milk feedings. His stomach became distended so they took an xray of it and found out that his bowles were dilated, which is a pretty serious issue for him. Basically his digestive system shuts down when he has infection and this can leave food in there to sit and bloat and cause all sorts of bad things. Because of this they had to put this horirble tube down his mouth into his stomach and it sucked out the air/gross juices from his intestines/bowels. He was SOO uncomfortable with this. He had a hard time sleeping with it and it was always making him gag. They found out that the infeciton was in his PICC line, so they had to remove the line. Because they stopped giving him milk, ALL of his nutrition was supposed to be coming through his PICC though, so this meant that he had to have an IV. Actually 2 IVs, because one of the medications they started him on had to be in a seperate line. Again, my poor poor baby boy. It is a constant battle with a preemie to find a vein and when they do find one, it doesn't last for long before it "blows." And when the baby has an infection, the veins tend to blow even faster. So he has had multiple IV's put in him over the past few days and he is still on his antibiotics. But the good news! His most recent IV has lasted almost 48 now, which is honestly a miracle, especially because it's in his wrist. They are hoping to avoid another PICC line. His bowels look great, he even had a few poops yesterday, which is amazing because he really isn't getting any food in his stomach to poop out. They started him on my milk today and since he would be almost 34 weeks, they even gave it to him in a bottle and he did great with it! The goal for him is to be on milk only by Sunday and then they will stop the IV fluids. He should also be done with his antibiotics on Sunday as well, so if we can just make it until then, no more IVs either! YAY!!! They are concerned with his low red blood cell count and low iron levels. The poor guys has had his blood drawn at almost once a day for 3 weeks now and it's started to affect him. But if they can keep him ok until Monday and he is on only milk, then they'll give him a shot to help encourage blood cell production and hopefully we can avoid a blood transfusion. But that's still up in the air for now. Anyway enough of the novel, lets see some pictures!

I was going through my mom's pictures and I came across this one of little Carden:

Holy Cuteness!