Okay, so Cole has been doing pretty good (I said pretty good, not great) at eating since being admitted to the hospital earlier this week. I have a few theories on this. My first theory is being admitted to the hospital was the youngest form of the Scared Straight program ever to be implemented. He saw the inside and decided life in the hospital wasn’t for him, so he started eating (one kid in the hospital had somehow formed a shank out of a nipple, it was a scary experience to witness). My other theory is Cole is far more of a practical joker than his daddy ever was.

We had a feeding specialist come by the house to help Cole with his eating yesterday. Of course he pounded a bottle in front of her with no problems. Cole, if your goal is to make everyone think mommy and daddy are crazy, mission accomplished. Seriously, every time we have a medical type person around him to evaluate him, he shines. I’m thinking of finding a nurse or a doctor to come by the house every 3 hours, just to watch Cole feed. That way for sure, we will get a full feed out of him.

His feedings aren’t the cake walk Paige’s are, but he is eating. He’s back to eating his 20 ounces a day (barely), since he is on the high cal diet, this is fine. Before we took him into the hospital, he was getting roughly 8-10 ounces a day (which consumed over 10 hours a day if you can believe it). Whereas my little princess Paige pounds 30 or so ounces a day without any fuss. In the middle of the night, when I pick her up and she is sound asleep she is already puckering her lips ready for a bottle by the time she lands in my arms.

And to future Cole, if you are reading this blog one day, I want you to know that when daddy is old and feeble, you will be feeding me. How do you like them apples?

“What? I’m going back to the hospital? No No No.
You have me confused with some other baby who doesn’t like to eat. Seriously give me a bottle I’ll show you!”

Bad news Cole fans. Cole was admitted to Phx Children’s Hospital this afternoon. His food intake had become pretty poor. In fact he hasn’t gained weight in 2 weeks (I could go on and on about how it consumed about 10 hours a day to get less than 10 ounces down him each day, but I’m too tired). They are probably going to put a NG tube back in him to pump him up with food. I’m sure they are going to submit him to a battery of tests to see if they can find anything medically wrong with him. I’m not sure how long he will be in the hospital, but the peed said count on a few days at the very least.

Tobie is at the hospital with Cole now. She said we are sharing a room with another kid. I’m not happy about that one bit. We’ve done our hardest keeping him secluded since being discharged last May. Now he is in the same room with another kid who’s family is in the same room. I just have a bad feeling he is going to catch a cold during his hospital stay. Tobie may or may not spend the night with him. They do not provide beds or cots for the parents (I guess that’s why they call it Children’s Hospital and not Parent’s Hospital).

This has definitely taken the wind from our sails. I’ll keep you posted as things develop. We’ve already heard the word G-tube mentioned a few times. I’m not happy about that.

Update 9:30 PM: Just talked to Tobie. Apparently they do not have private rooms at Phx Children’s. That blows. She finally was able to talk to the doctor. They aren’t going to touch Cole until tomorrow (why did they want to admit us right away? Son of a…). Originally when the peed said we should go to the hospital, we were really on the fence about going because it was late in the day and we thought they wouldn’t do much to him. How right we were. Right now Tobie says Cole is a little freaked out. He definitely knows he doesn’t like being there. So tomorrow morning they are going to do a barium swallow test to see if he has reflux. Not sure what else they are going to do to him. Tobie is going to spend the night because they want her to try to feed him through the night. Lets just say Tobie will not get one minute of sleep tonight, guaranteed.

Update: 10:45 AM on 7.25.06: Not much to report. Cole and Tobie are still at the hospital. They have a barium swallow test today at 2 PM and a bowel study tomorrow. She wants to be discharged today. We had already had a barium swallow test scheduled for Thursday. They are not giving Cole anything he can’t get at home, plus we risk infection while at the hospital. So they are doing rounds right now and Tobie will plead our case to the doctors. More to come later.

Oh Paige had her pediatric opthamologist appointment this morning (God bless Tobie for going to the majority of these appointments). The doctor doesn’t want to see her for 4 months. We still have a follow-up appointment scheduled with the retina specialist next week. The doctor basically said her retinas should not detach and she should have sight in her right eye. We just won’t know how much until she gets older (she has some excessive scarring in that eye). We are also now working with the foundation for the blind. They will help us with therapy and hopefully we will be able to spot anything funky before it’s a serious problem.

“Double Fisting” isn’t what it used to mean

The babies had a follow up pulmonology appointment today. The day was absolutely brutal. We won’t go there. We’ll just focus on the babies:

1. Paige is done with the apena monitor. Woo hoo!
2. Cole isn’t it. Boo!
3. Paige looks and sounds great. No follow-up for 2 months. Woo hoo!
4. Paige is changing her diet. Since the Atkins diet is so passe, she is going to try the South Beach diet. They want her to go on 22 cal supplemented with rice cereal (Just like the peed wanted, more carbs). However, we’ve tried to feed her that and she can’t seem to suck the formula out of the bottle. We bought special Y-cut nipples (Dr. Brown), and she had trouble eating it (any moms have any advice about that, please chime in). So she is going to go on 26 cal with Polycose supplement (carbs baby!). We were told that high cal formula is very protein rich and could cause kidney problems. Super!
5. Cole has plateaued on the growth charts. The doctor feels he should be doing much better than he is (I couldn’t agree more). Tobie described his poor eating habits and he wants to rule out reflux (I always thought he might have silent reflux after someone mentioned it to me). He is going to get some sort of GI work done next week (maybe a scope, don’t know what procedure yet). He’ll also have a chest x-ray. That should hopefully tell us if anything is going on inside that might cause his poor eating.
6. Cole is also going to go on the Polycose for extra calories.
7. We’ve been giving Cole inhaled steroids which is an absolute nightmare. If you put anything around Cole’s mouth he freaks out. So we are going to try a nebulizer to administer the roids to make sure he’s getting his full dose.
8. Cole will have a overnight study done next week with his O2 at .25 instead of the usual .5. He’ll be hooked up to his monitor all night and them the doctor will download the data to see if we can keep him at a reduced O2 level.

So all in all a mixed day. I welcome the day when we go to a doctor’s appointment and they say “Everyone looks great, I’ll see your kids in 6 months for a check-up”.

Tobie here:
Short post today. Most important news: Cole methodically rolled over this morning from his back to his stomach. It took a while..first there was the lifting of the legs to roll onto his side. From there he stretched onto his stomach. Go Cole!! The funny part is that once on his stomach he slept in for another hour, but if I wanted him to do tummy time…it would last only about 5 minutes before he’d get upset.
The babies’ Great-Grandma (GG-Ma) has been with me the last two mornings (she’s here for 2 weeks). She rocks. Both Paige and Cole absolutely adore her.
Oh! Thought I should clarify before I receive numerous comments about how babies shouldn’t sleep on their bellies…Cole was hooked up to his monitor while on his belly.

Trust me, it was much more exciting in person.