Off the Cannula!

As of yesterday, Emerson is off his nasal cannula! He is up to 2130 g (about 4 lbs 11 oz) and is doing really well. The next milestones are going to be outgrowing his apnea and brady events and working up to taking all of his feeds by mouth. This afternoon he decided to remove and hand his NG tube to his nurse. :-) She thought she would leave it out and give him a chance to prove himself without it, but he choked on his meds when he tried to take them by mouth. Hopefully, we will be off most of the oral meds before he comes home! So, much to his dismay, the tube went back in.
We are also waiting for the pediatric surgeon to come back from vacation to fix his two *huge* inguinal hernias. He is having a hyda-scan (who knows how to spell that one correctly!) on Wednesday to check to be sure the bile ducts from his liver to his intestines are correctly formed. His direct bilirubin level is higher than it should be at this point. It is a common side effect from the IV nutrition he was on for so long, but he's been off that now for about a month and the levels aren't improving. It could just be that his liver is taking it's time healing from that, but they just want to be sure there aren't any other problems.