Doctor's Appointments

Last week Carter had his first Doctor's appointment since leaving the NICU. It was to our pediatrician basically to fill him in on Carter and do a weight check, which is something we will do every other week.

This is my Mother in law and I with all Carter's loot for the appointment. Every single one of those items HAS to go with us whenever we leave the house. What is all the loot you ask? Let me tell ya. My Mother in law has his oxygen tank and the grey bag is his suctioning machine. I've got Carter, the regular diaper bag, and the back pack. In the back pack there are his heart and saturation monitors and a smaller back pack that has his feeding pump in it. We were laughing at our selves the whole time. There was a whole lot of "you go first, no you go first", "be careful my wire is pulling to tight" Let's just say it isn't that easy to get out of the house. For that reason along with the fact that we are NOT getting sick and don't want to end up back in the hospital we will stay undercover for a while. Not to mention I have to bring all his meds, food, and medical history with us. If nothing else it was a good laugh.

Cute boy stretched out on the doctors table. He weighed 9 lbs. 10 oz. he is 20 inches tall and his head circumference is 15 inches Leaving him in the -3 percentile for 4.5 months. Right on track size and developmentally for a one month old which is our goal. Wahoo!

Had to add this because he is just so dang cute. I am starting to see so much of Boston in him. It's crazy!

On Monday we had an appointment with the Pulminologist (lung doctor). He will be the one to make any changes as far as feeding, oxygen, and everything else goes. Basically the main Doctor we will follow up with. He was very pleased with Carter's progress since coming home. When we were getting ready to leave the Hospital he was on eight L of oxygen and is now down to .5 L. said that we are good to wean him on his oxygen at our will depending on his saturation levels. The news that made me so happy was that during the day at home we can take him off the trach humidifier (big blue or white tube you've seen in pictures) I was so happy. Not only does that tie us down to go no further than our family room due to the 5 feet cord, but it is also the heaviest and loudest machine we have!!! So now he is on a HME which is a little plug that goes on his trach (pictured above) it acts has his nose and keeps things moist so his throat and airway don't get dry. He also said that we can offer Carter a bottle 3 times a day for 20 minutes and let him take as much of his feed as he can. In the hospital they limited him to on 15 ml so that he didn't aspirate or throw up. It bugged me so bad that they put a limit on it because that was the purpose of the Nissen (long belly scar) was to keep him from throwing up. So yeah for more good news. He will be taking all his feeds from a bottle before we know it. We go back in a month.

Today we went to the pediatric opthamologist. Carter had stage two retinalopothy and we were so happy to find out that it has completely healed on it's own no eye surgery in our future. He was so confident in Carter's progress that we don't have to go back ever again. Unless we see something obviously.

Next week we go to the ENT, Pediatric surgeon, and pediatrician. So I guess we won't totally be home bound, just visits to the doctors. Which we happen to have at least one a week for the next couple months. Getting out got a whole lot easier I will tell you why later.

The good thing about most of Carter's appointments is that they are pediatric specialist so they have very fun offices, which makes Boston a big fan. He was so excited to go to the appointment today.