Connor's Winnebago to Radiology - March 11, 2009Yesterday was Connor's video swallow study. They let me shoot a bit of video of the test... don't mind my camera skills - I was trying to hold it steady while watching Connor on the table.
And the results... inconclusive.
Sadly, Connor wasn't set up for success. The whole concept of the bottle is new to him, plus he hadn't been given one in several days. They wanted him to swallow 20 ml of barium (yum!), when he had previously only had 5-7 ml of breastmilk in his feedings before. With all the excitement with the newspaper earlier that morning, he hadn't gotten a good nap in before we went down to Radiology, so he was really sleepy. And the kicker... the speech therapist was the one who had to administer the bottle, and he's not exactly fond of her.
As you can see in the video, they weren't able to get a lot of footage of him swallowing the barium, much less milk. So glad we had to put him through that. At least they were able to see that generally speaking, most everything is working properly.
The speech therapist will reevaluate him on Monday. Meantime, he's able to bottle feed twice per day, 25 ml mixed with a thickener to make the milk a nectar-like consistency. Hopefully this will help him grow stronger with his bottle feedings without taking in too much milk and aspirating.
Currently, his neonatologist is hypothesizing that Connor's need for extra oxygen at this point might be related to the fact that he was born premature, and his lungs haven't quite caught up to his recent growth spurt. Today he seemed to be requiring less oxygen, except for when he was fussy. He's been a little more affected by environmental noise lately (wailing babies, loud parents)... which has been causing a lot of the fussiness. We hope he gets to graduate soon to the step-down NICU, where it's usually a little quieter.
So, we'll be working on bottle feeding over the weekend... how about you?
Back in the NICU after the video swallow study,enjoying the "oaky afterbirth" of the barium - March 11, 2009
The pudge of his cheeksis starting to fill out the rest of his body! - March 11, 2009
Aaahhh... jacuzzi time - March 11, 2009
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2 comments:
I just want to kiss those cheeks! I haven't been online for a couple of days, so it was fun catching up on his progress. Congrats on the Tribune pics... the one of the two of you needs to be put in a frame!! :) lots of hugs from us...
Eww, eww, you are bringing back my feelings about our occupational therapist. Crew couldn't stand her either and never ate well for her. We almost had a barium study and a few other things. Fortunately we were able to avoid it in the end. In his case, he wasn't desatting, she diagnosed him with "stridor", which is a wheezing when he eats. You know, kind of like ANY BABY?? It wasn't stridor, it was grunting. I was irate. She wanted to do the study and also shove a camera down his trachea on general anesthetic. I still get worked up about it.
When they condensed Crew's feeds from continuous feeds down to just over an hour, that was when he started into his brady/apnea/desat spells. I THINK it was reflux, but I'll never know, but I do know that he got a lot better when we bumped him back up to continuous feeds. That's obviously not a longterm solution, but to me it was an indicator that maybe it really WAS reflux. He eventually did get over it with some time and growth. But they were freaking out like they are with Connor, maybe it's infection! Maybe it's normal prematurity, blah blah. Maybe it's a virus! Once we put him back on continuous feeds they decreased dramatically. Again, that's not really a viable solution especially to get the Prince home, but it helped us all realize it wasn't infection or anything else when he responded so quickly.
I wonder... I wonder if they could put him on continuous feeds and then work him back off ridiculously slowly like, condense it over 2 hours and 45 minutes for a day and then 2 hours adn 30 minutes, and then slip in an hour's feeding here and there.
Look at obnoxious me. Sorry!
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