Day 18 - No time with Jonah, grrr!

I needed to go in for my one week follow up on my gallbladder surgery today, and with the drive time being almost 2 hours each way, I knew it would eat up the majority of the day. I also knew it would be pointless, but I'm a rule follower, and I appreciated the surgeon fitting me in, so I went. It took 7 minutes and consisted of looking at one of the four incisions and asking if I felt OK. Yep, I do, otherwise I would have let you know. K, we good?

I took the opportunity to pick up our mail and put away the last shower's presents in Jonah's room. And to see my flowers blooming, the daffodils and tulips are already done, but the serviceberry bush, peartree and crabapple we planted last year are blooming. I'm missing spring this year, I can't wait to show Jonah his new home. I can't believe he's never even seen the sky, or anything outside the hospital. That's sad! But of course he won't remember, I'm just being silly. Here's a picture of our "super baby", he's so strong and working so hard!

The tube you see in addition to the nasal cannula (the one that looks blue on the right side of his face) is his feeding tube. It's often referred to as an NG tube (N for nasal/nose), when he had one going into his mouth it was an OG tube (oral/mouth). This allows us to give him breastmilk without him having to work so hard to suck it from a bottle. We often start by offering him a bottle, but when he falls asleep and won't take the rest, we give it to him through the tube, referred to as Gavage feeding. The amount he took via mouth every day is referred to as his PO, so 40% means he took 40% of his daily breastmilk intake by mouth, the rest we gavaged. I asked what the PO stood for and was told "Per Os", it's Latin for "by mouth". NPO means you're not allowed to eat anything orally. One moment from the hospital I won't forget is that I was down in the cafeteria, eating my standard turkey sandwich and I saw a mom and her, maybe 8 year old son. And she was eating a sandwich and he reached for her pickle and she yelled (startled, not meanly), "No son, you're NPO"...that struck me as so sad, that an 8 year old should even know what NPO meant, that he should calmly accept it (as he did) as part of the treatment that he had to endure (and most likely not the worst part), just as he pulled his IV cart behind him around the cafeteria. The strength of these children is amazing! Especially those old enough to know what they're missing, to know that their childhood shouldn't be like this, and to still often have a maturity beyond their years, even though they shouldn't have to.