Jack Kaden

Jack is 3 today! Ok, 3 weeks. not really 3.

But it’s stilll a big event around here, and we are pretty psyched about it. Today we saw Jack at around 2:00pm and arrived to see that he is up to 9 -thats right N I N E ! cc’s of milk per feeding!

For those of you tunning in late, they feed Jack breastmilk through a plunger attached to a tube that goes into his mouth and down to his stomach. The plunger is attached to a little press, that slowly, over the course of an hour, squirts the milk in the plunger into his tummy.

Anyways, 9cc’s is so much milk that they are going to have to start putting it in a larger plunger. And thats what I like to see: Bigger. Better. Faster. Stronger.

We spoke to Dr. Klein about the balancing act between feeding and breathing. It breaks down like this. When they feed him more, he can end up with more fluid in his lungs, that makes it very hard for him to breathe. But then, if they work on aggressively getting him off the ventilator, he needs as many calories of energy as possible, because breathing on his own takes a lot out of the little fella. Get it?

Dr. Klein’s point is that Jack is still very young, and his treatment is very “day by day”. However, 3 weeks ago, it was “minute by minute”, so “day by day” is actually a big improvement, and we should be happy about that.

On Tuesday, they’re going to do another head sonogram. It will be the third one that they’ve done. Since the first two have been clear, If this one is too, then they wont do another one, and he’ll pretty much out of the woods on bleeding in the brain, which is a huge deal. So we have our fingers crossed on that.

Also, If he continues to gain weight as he has been at the rate of about 30 grams a day, he will shortly be a hulking 3 pounds of pure sarahandarchieosity. Yep, thats a word. Look it up. I dare you.

As an extra bonus, this is an art-house film that Sarah has titled “Little Blue Feet”

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 5:16 pm and is filed under General, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.