Pop quiz.
When told that multiple people at two hospitals have made arrangements for "tomorrow afternoon" for a transfer, you
A) take it at face value and plan accordingly.
B) hesitate to believe, but plan on it anyway, just in case.
C) put no stock in it, remembering past statements on the subject which came to nothing.

I grow more cynical daily. And that's saying something for me. I was already the most cynical person I know.

I got a call this morning from a doctor who works at both hospitals. As soon as he said the word "unfortunately," I lost all faith. The other hospital just got an influx of new staff because of a merger, and with everyone finding their place there and being newly oriented, putting another baby in their care was beyond them, so they declared. This was after they said yesterday that the would come and pick up Quinn today. They knew yesterday that there were new people and that they were overwhelmed by that change. But they waited until today to decide they had more than they could handle already. I was unimpressed to say the least. This doctor apologized, saying he knew we wanted Quinn closer to home. I told him what I told the nurse practitioner yesterday, that getting him closer was secondary to having a smaller place with fewer people so that I didn't have to ferret out the real story, I could get it directly from the few people involved. He said when I came in this evening, he would meet with me and we would talk about ways to alleviate my concerns.

I got there this evening, and went to Quinn first. We had an awesome nursing session tonight. The other times he's been successful, he hung out on me for a little while before sucking. Tonight, he had no hesitation. He ate for about 15 minutes. We're making strides.

Unfortunately, my good mood with that was short lived. I had yet another example of too many people involved in Quinn's care. At one point, I looked over on a low shelf, and saw four bottles of breastmilk just sitting there. I asked the nurse about them, and she hadn't seen them at all, and had been there for nearly 4 hours. She went and called the nurse who had been there before her who said she's pulled them out of the freezer to thaw in the early afternoon and forgotten about them. And now they had sat out too long and were no good. I can ill afford to have my milk wasted like that. That was roughly 200 ml of milk down the tubes.

I met with the doctor after Quinn was settled into his tube feed. He apologized again, and said that he would normally just tell a parent that the transfer wouldn't be able to happen that day, but with me, he got the impression I would need the full story. So I got the full story. Lucky me. I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not. I told him of my concerns that we get garbled messages through many different people instead of hearing directly with the people who are making decisions. In particular, I pointed out he urologist. Kurt met with his resident about six weeks ago. But neither of us has either met or spoken with the urologist himself. That surprised this doctor, who said he would make sure he called us, so we could get everything straight from him, instead of, say, having someone tell us that Quinn needs a test, when in fact the urologist didn't say that, and didn't plan to do it until Quinn was much older. These are the sorts of details that need to be ironed out.

We also talked about Quinn himself. He said overall, all things considered, Quinn is doing well and is having a sort of typical course for a preemie of his age and size. The two main concerns are of course his lungs, getting him weaned down off breathing support, and his nutrition. Quinn has rickets, and his nutritional intake needs to be monitored carefully. The doctor stressed how important it is to make sure Quinn is growing, and typically when preemies go home, they get a certain number of feeds of either formula or fortified milk, and beyond that is all breastfeeding. And the goal is to get him growing well. I asked if parents go home with a scale to monitor growth, and he said no, because the pediatrician should be the one to do that. The implication I got was that if parents had a scale, they would make too many decisions regarding how their babies are fed. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I don't think I'll spend much energy analyzing it though. I need my energy to stay awake on the drives downtown, which will continue for the foreseeable future. I don't even want to speculate anymore when they will end. I've been burned too many times doing that. I'm done.