Rough Day

First the good news. In the major medical sense, Bobby is doing great. His chest tubes have almost quit draining, meaning his insides are recovering from the trauma of the surgery. We started him on his regularly scheduled feeds and he did great with his first bolus in over a week. The doctors are very pleased.

Mamas, however, are less pleased. Bobby has been crying all day. I spent the morning thinking that 'the problem' is that he's feeling better and so is rebelling at having to do all the things a medical patient has to do, like lie in a crib while being poked and prodded. But as the day wore on and he needed a dose of Benedryl on top of Ativan to fall asleep, and woke up screaming his head off, I became convinced that it's pain and not crankiness causing the crying.

Right now he is fairly content as I talked my way to half a dose of morphine for him. But I'm worried about what the night holds if we don't come up with a better plan than Tylenol-Motrin-sedate-when-hysterical. I'm currently waiting for the APN to come talk to me about said alternate plan. Hopefully I won't have to fight to get him on stronger pain medication, but I am prepared to. This stinks.