Update, Tuesday evening

We're in the IMC unit (intermediate care) now. They moved Carter here around 2:00 this afternoon, and he seemed to do better once we were in the room. It's a fairly nice room, with a sofa that folds out into two single beds for Doug and I to sleep on, a really big bathroom, a TV with tons of cable channels, and high speed internet access.

Carter is hooked up to two different monitors (and so has two sets of leads), plus an oxygen sat thingie on his hand and an IV in his leg. The IV is capped off now; they just flush it every couple of hours. He's been eating better as time goes on. I tried to nurse him a little while ago but he kept falling asleep. It's weird to pump and put my milk back into the little bottles and fill out the labels again. At least we have our own room this time, heh.

Another difference from the NICU is that we can pick him up whenever we want, and we can decide when to feed him and how. It's nice to be able to make those decisions. The nurses check his vitals every two hours, and so they're changing his diapers (and weighing them). That means I haven't had to put a disposable on him yet, heh.

He's doing much better than he was this morning. He hasn't had any new apnea spells since we've been in the room, which is a relief. Every now and then the monitor alarms will go off, but it's just been a quick desat that comes right back up, perhaps because he was straining to poop or pass gas and held his breath.

He's more alert and acting like himself again too. He's clearly a little sore, and they've given him tylenol for it. With luck we'll be able to go home tomorrow. One of his monitors is recording his breathing and heart rate, and that recording will be sent down to be analyzed tomorrow morning. I think a decision will be made at that point about how much longer to keep him here.

In the end, I'm glad we did the surgery now, even with the apnea issues. That bit of intestine that was stuck in his groin could have been a bigger problem than a day of needing to be on a monitor.