He's Wearing Clothes!

CURRENT WEIGHT: 2 LBS, 11.5 OUNCES

TEMPERATURE: Truman has always had a pretty easy time maintaining his body temperature. As of today, he is on air control, which means that the isolette no longer reacts to his body temperature and adjusts the air temperature to suit him. Instead, the air is set at a certain temperature, and he is clothed and swaddled and expected to keep his own temperature in check. He is so cute in his micropreemie (up to 3 lbs) onesie.

RESPIRATION: Truman was weaned to straight C-PAP (no back-up breaths) today and is doing very well. He is still very annoyed by the prongs. He is still on track to move back to canula next week. If he has trouble with straight C-PAP or canula, the plan is to increase his caffeine dosage (which is currently minimal, something like 2 out of a possible 10) before increasing respiration support.

FEEDINGS: Increased to 24 CCs per feed. That's 6 ounces per day. He still tolerates all his feeds quite well and knows his feeding schedule and lets the room know when he is hungry.

NEURAL SCAN: The swelling in the ventricles remained stable and showed no change. The bleed in the basal ganglia area has decreased slightly.

MEDS: Truman is off of the phenobarbitol for his liver because his bilirubin level is quite low. He has been off of thyroid medication for a few days. The orders for morphine and atavain were stopped today, so it's up to Truman to remain calm and collected without any medication support. However, he hasn't been sedated with either one in quite some time because they were both IV only, and the IVs have been out for several days now.

OTHER UPDATES: He has graduated to a bigger baby isolette rather than the giraffe isolette for tiny babies. He had his first tub bath yesterday. He smells a lot better and his hair is lighter now that he's had a good scrub. Tub baths are not normally given to babies on C-PAP. Well, Truman wanted one really bad because yesterday, he had a colossal fit and pulled out his C-PAP prongs, strap, and even the sticky velcro tabs from his face. He also pulled out his feeding tube and managed to get his temperature probe wound around his neck during this fit. So, since he was all free anyway, Nurse Lisa gave him a bath. She said he did very well, was very alert and responsive during the bath, and did well without any respiration support for an hour during the bath.

He had another big fit today, so Lisa got him out and held him and rocked him a bit to soothe him. He really loves being held.