Follow directions please 9:47am April 25th

So Cassie and I are kind of ticked right now.  So when we got here we had to track down Owen's nurse (that isn't really anything new as things have been going lately).  We wanted to get the volumes that he took in last night and this morning after we left so we can continue keeping an accurate record.  Before we left last night, we told his nurse that he was getting hungry about every two hours yesterday and that she should plan on feeding him every two hours.  When we look at his chart, the last time we fed him was just after 10pm and the next time his nurse fed him was 1am and then like 4:30am.  His last feed before we got here was 8:30am just before we got to the hospital.  I think his nurse was waiting until he was making noise to come in to give him feeds, but after he gets upset he usually doesn't take as much when he is getting upset.  And Owen usually only takes so much when he feeds so waiting longer to feed him isn't really going to help him take in a larger volume at once.  So long story short he has only taken 115ml so far since midnight and at this time yesterday he was already at 184ml, he is almost a full 70ml behind so far today.  We weighed Owen this morning at 3700 grams, just 4 grams up from yesterday.  I hope his nurse not listening to us overnight doesn't set him back and ultimately keep him in the hospital longer.  The one thing at this point that could keep Owen in the hospital is not taking adequate volume and failing to gain weight.

We were talking to the speech therapist about it and she was kind of upset that they weren't feeding Owen at least every three hours.  In his notes it says ad lib for Owen, but they still want him to eat at least every three hours.  So now she is making sure that they change his feeding order to say ad lib but make sure he isn't going longer than three hours between feeds.  Now we are probably going to have to work hard all day to make sure that he reaches his goal for feeds.

The discharge nurse stopped in to talk to us.  We have pretty much done everything that we need to do before we can take Owen home, the only thing that still needs to be done is the car seat test which can't be done more than 48 hours before discharge.  She was also talking to us about the Birth to Three program that will help provide OT/PT and Speech therapies to Owen once we get him home.  In Manitowoc County the Birth to Three program is going to be through the Visiting Nurses Association from Aurora because Owen has United Healthcare HMO and they go through Aurora in or area.  They wanted to check out the Birth to Three right away so that there isn't a significant lapse in care when we go home.  She said it would take maybe two weeks before someone comes out to our house which is acceptable because they will be giving us exercises to do with Owen before we go home.

I think the next couple of days are going to get really busy trying to get everything ready to go home.  We are going to be meeting with a lot of different people.