Day 5 in the NICU Prep for Surgery

Baby Jeshua was a bit grumpy today off and on and is constantly rooting around or sucking on a pacifier. We're convinced he is fully ready to nurse now and are told that he feels hunger from his empty stomach despite being nourished intravenously, but will have to wait to nurse until sometime mid next week depending on how fast he recovers from surgery.

We met with Dr. Walker today who will perform his colostomy tomorrow and remove the lower part of the colon. Including prep time, it'll be about 2 hours and should be done around noon. The time is not written in stone, as the first procedure is to begin biopsying five sections up the colon to determine exactly where the nerves are so he knows what section to take out. If they don't find any nerves, they'll have to cut and send more samples to pathology, and back and forth until they find nerves. It takes them about 30 minutes to freeze the sample and find out if its got nerves, so hopefully they'll find it on the first shot.

We got to skype with our kids today. I'd recorded video of baby Jesh as he woke up today on my cell phone. So, while skyping, I played back the video so it looked to the kids like Jesh was with us. We didn't intend to be sneaky, but realized they thought he was actually with us and were waving and talking to him and things. It was so cute that we might do it again, even if it is a little sneaky!

After surgery tomorrow, I'll go pickup Aaron and Leah to come and stay Friday night with us here in Spokane for just the night. They won't be able to visit the baby, but it'll be good to spend more time with them.