Day 37

No optiflow & a bottle feed

Peter and Nicki went into the hospital together today to visit with Robin. When they arrived, they were surprised and happy to see that Robins optiflow breathing assistance has been turned off! The nose prongs that Robin constantly tried to pull out are now gone, leaving Robin to breathe on his own. So far, he has been doing well, but as with last time, they will trial him without optiflow for 24 hours, and measure his oxygen desaturation levels, before officially declaring him free of the optiflow. We are so happy to be able to see Robins face clearly.

We were hoping to try and breast feed today, but considering that the optiflow has just been removed, we didn’t want to do anything additional that may tire him out. We did however, get the opportunity to give him a bottle for the first time. When Nicki went to check for nasal gastric tube position, there was no milk in his stomach (even though his feeds were upped to 27mls). Instead of giving him some milk via syringe, the nurse put 10mls of milk into a bottle and we sat him up to see if he would drink it. He did very well for his first time, sucking on the teat, and swallowing the milk. He drank about 5mls from the bottle, before thinking it was all too much effort, and he would much rather milk was just administered directly into his stomach.

Nick and Peter both had a cuddle with Robin, which was made a lot easier without the optiflow tubes. His ECG monitors kept coming off of his skin though, making the monitors alarms go off, which was a bit annoying. The little wires and monitors are held on his skin with a little adhesive pad. After a few days, the adhesive wears off, and tends to come unstuck. The nurse said she will replace this evening to get proper reads.

Visitors: Granny Suzy

Stats

Weight: 1920 grams

Air: No assistance

Feed: 27ml / two hourly (gavage)

Nurses: Emily