Paper or Plastic

I know...I know...it's taken me quite a while today to get this posted but I will explain in the following...

Tennyson has undergone many changes in the past few days...first of all his PICC line was removed (praise the Lord) therefore he is no longer receiving TPN (the nutrition) and only has his feeding tube and oxygen. He weighed 3lbs. 11.5 ounces last night and 3lbs. 11.8 ounces tonight. They have very aggressively been increasing his feedings here as many as three mls per day so we were receiving 29 ml/1hr this morning but they have now moved that to 29ml/1.5 hrs. This has led poor Tennyson to encounter a few complications.

His head ultrasound results were received and were negative which means everything looks great there so that's another huge Praise, thanks for the prayers on that one.

A common complication with preemies is bradycardia and apnea, this means that during a "brady" his heart rate drops below the recommended ranges and during apnea, he forgets to breathe. Over the past two days as his feedings have increased so drastically we have had quite a few episodes with both brady and apnea. There are many things that could cause this including respiratory distress, exhaustion, reflux, infection, etc. Everyone on staff here believes based on the times the episodes occur and the other symptoms that are present during their occurrence that the cause of his is reflux (symptoms including hiccups, gurgling in the back of his throat, resemblant of snoring, etc). Many times as the reflux comes up and enters the preemies throats they don't want to swallow or breathe because of the burning sensation they're feeling therefore they "brady" and apnea.

During Tennyson's worst fits they have had to pull out the Oxygen and "bag" him, hence the title for this post. So please be praying that tomorrow's test (as they are running many, including several blood tests, a tests of his sugars, a test for infection and a chest x-ray) to try and figure out exactly what's causing these spells so that they can try and treat them and make him more comfortable. He was "bagged" once last night during his kangaroo time with Travis and then three times today they used the bag on him however used it more as a CPAP.

To end with a funny story from today, this morning following my kangaroo time, I realized he needed his diaper changed. As I was pulling the dirty one off after getting him all cleaned up (and the clean one was underneath the dirty one for fast securing...) he tooted and then released his poop shoot for lack of a better term. Needless to say he covered the floor in his room, his issolette, my shirt and pants, his clean diaper, his bedding and his clothing. As his nurse and I were getting all that cleaned up he wiggled out of his diaper and pottied all over the freshly cleaned issolette (needless to say tonight we got a new issolette, new bedding and a bath so we're smelling nice). Thought this was hilarious and something that is continually making me smile, thinking about it therefore thought I'd share it. So I was unable to update the blog this morning because I had to run over to the Ronald McDonald house to shower and change between his feedings. Then this afternoon we had a Ronald McDonald house meeting so I was unable to update then as well. So now I'm sitting in Tenny's room with Travis anxiously watching as he's finishing his feeding...

Please continue to pray for little Tennyson's development and especially now for his breathing and digestion as hopefully it is acid reflux and not an infection that we're dealing with here. One common complication that occurs with reflux however is aspiration which is when the reflux that comes up into his throat is then deposited into his lungs and causes pneumonia. Also pray that Tennyson will be able to rest well, he's been more awake the past few days partially because of the reflux I would imagine and partially because it's so much louder and brighter where we're now located. We know the Lord is holding Tennyson in His hands and us as well as this has been quite a few days on this roller coaster we call life.

Thanks for all your prayers and for taking the time to visit this blog and check on our little guy.

Thankful-
Travis, Lindsay & Tennyson Myers