Even though Trevor decided that he should be awake most of the night, we still had a pretty good day and I managed to get a nice long nap in this afternoon.

Brendan is still a few days from coming off of the ventilator, but we are happy with his slow, steady progress. The settings on the vent today are the same as what they had tried this weekend when he didn’t do well on them. That shows he has made improvements.
The respiratory therapist is concerned about his having been on the vent since birth, and is working to get him in the best shape to breathe on his own.
He is responding to the increase in Lasix and has shed some more of his puffiness, but his lungs’ wetness hadn’t really changed on the xray yet. He is up to 12cc of milk as of noon today, but instead of giving it to him all at once every 3 hours, they will most likely start pushing it in a very slow continuous feed. The doctors believe that this will give him a better chance of absorbing more of the nutrients and fluids before it all just ends up in his ostomy bag.
The doctors also want to start seeing the IV lines going away as his medications are reduced. They stopped the Milrinone and today was his last day of post-op antibiotics. They are pulling the pacemaker wires today and will consider removing the atrial line in the next day or two. One doctor wanted it gone today but the surgeon wanted it to stay just a little longer.
Brendan’s major event today was getting a new bed. It is almost the same as the old one, a little newer model, but the key is it has a built in scale. They will be able to do their weighings now without disturbing him as much.

Trevor is spending a lot more time awake in between his feedings. He is still being pretty mellow, but he makes tons of cute little sounds. He growls, grunts, “laughs” and makes little sounds like a goat. As I type this, he is has hiccups.
The pediatrician recommended that he start taking vitamin D supplements so I bought the drops. Even though he made a really strange face initially, he seemed to kind of like them.

Mom bought some gorgeous ribeye steaks tonight and we had some pumpkin pie, who says you have to wait until Thanksgiving to eat pie? The pumpkin pies from Costco are amazing, especially when topped with real fresh-whipped cream!!

The syringe of milk taped to the bed is being gravity fed in to his NG tube

Brendan has another new buddy today, a Greyhound greyhound. Makes me wonder if he didn’t hop a bus last night and head to the casinos.

Bill helps with the bed swap-out. Brendan handled the chaos very well and settled down quickly.

Babies video chatting! Trevor is “Hanging Out” with 3 of his cousins in Illinois, but his food coma got the best of him.

Baby with a bear butt!