Day 40: Say Your Prayers

After returning home from the hospital last night, Scott, Susanne, Gigi, and Poppy spent some time sitting around the kitchen table chatting and laughing. They stayed awake late enough to watch the clock change from 1:59am to 3:00am for daylight savings time. This morning's departure, therefore, occurred a little later than usual.
After a pit stop at Bob Evans for a late breakfast, the crew arrived at Paxton's room to find him sleeping comfortably. When the nurse gave her update, she reported that Paxton was still being given Susanne's breast milk despite the last two positive fecal occult blood tests. This was a nice surprise since the previous plan was to stop the breast milk if any of the stool showed up positive with blood. She mentioned that the amount being given per hour had been increased twice overnight, but that it would not be increased anymore for the time being. The doctors were thinking that the switch over to a NG-tube as well as increasing the amount being fed per hour may have been too much for his system to handle all at once. Susanne and Scott were very relieved to hear that they were going to continue with the breast milk. This was awesome news.
The nurse also mentioned that Paxton's PICC line had stopped working properly so the doctors decided to take it out. This meant that the nutritional supplements that he was receiving intravenously would be discontinued. From that point forward, not only was one less set of wires connected to Paxton, but he was also being entirely sustained on Susanne's milk. Paxton is definitely headed in the right direction.
The nurse decided that today would be the best day to show Scott and Susanne how to change Paxton's feeding tube since Scott is only home on the weekends. She thought it would be important for them to be able to do this on their own in case Paxton was discharged with a NG-tube for feedings. This indicated that she was preparing them for him to possibly come home soon. How exciting!
Gigi and Poppy spent some time watching videos of Paxton's journey thus far on Scott's laptop . It was really nice to share them with the people who were unable to visit Paxton during his first month in the NICU. Paxton spent a lot of time in Gigi and Poppy's arms throughout the afternoon. Poppy even read Paxton his bedtime story, "The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers". Paxton really enjoyed it. Thanks Chintala family.
It was a really nice day full of encouraging news. It was the first day that felt as though Paxton's stay at the hospital would soon be over. Thank you to everyone for your prayers. There is no possible doubt that they are working.