ET phone home

The thing strapped to Evan’s foot is the sensor for the oxygen saturation measuring machine. I admit I tweaked it amateurishly in Photoshop, but the diode on it truly does make his toe glow like that.

Things are very much as they were before. He’s still on oxygen and still feeding sporadically. The doctors are reluctant to go down the nasal feeding route, as are we, so we’re going to persevere with the breast feeding. No one has actually mentioned staying in for another night, but nor have they mentioned going home either. I’ve come away in order to pick up Amy from nursery, but the doctor should be with Kerry about now so I expect we’ll find out more about what they want to do soon enough.

Both Kerry and I would be a little concerned if they asked us to go home tonight as his oxygen levels still occasionally dip below 90 when he moves his head away from the air mask or when he falls asleep. We’ve been told to judge his wellbeing by “watching the baby, not the monitor” but that’s quite hard to do when the bloody thing keeps going off like a car alarm. Still, we haven’t ever had the impression that the medical staff were taking any risks at all with Evan so if they told us to go home we’d probably trust them. Don’t think we’d sleep that well though.

We haven’t seen a great deal of the nursing staff, mainly because he doesn’t require all that much nursing. Kerry and I make sure that the facemask is pointing in his general direction and alert the staff should we have any concerns so there is not much left to do. We do have a student nurse allocated to us, probably because Evan’s a straight forward enough case and so she can’t do much harm. She’s ok, but I wish she’d stop saying “Of course dad you’ll know this, what with you being a nurse”. I keep telling her I’m not that kind of nurse and, unless Evan suddenly starts developing a schizophrenic episode, I’m just as clueless as the next guy, but it doesn’t seem to sink in. I guess she just doesn’t want to patronise me.

Amy’s a little puzzled about what’s going on, and she didn’t sleep at all well last night. She’s not at nursery tomorrow so my mum has kindly said she’ll have her for the morning. I’ll take her to visit Kerry and Evan in the afternoon, and then perhaps spend some quality time with her as she’s missed out a bit the past couple of days.

I’m going to get her from nursery now and then take her to the hospital. I’ll let you know if there have been any developments when I get back.

Bookmark It

Related posts:

1. Home sweet home
2. We’re home
3. Too close to home.
4. Walking home from school