I hate getting my hopes up.

We had a disappointing day with nursing. Both times I was there, Quinn wouldn't latch on. He had done so well the last few days that I just expected it to continue in that vein. I tried for 30 minutes both times and he wouldn't do it. The first time I blamed it on the fact that there were people streaming past us to get to a wall of consent forms and protocols that were right behind his bed. I asked if he could be moved across the room so that wouldn't happen again. Well, he moved and it didn't make a difference. He just wouldn't do it. He was awake, alert, and willing to interact, but not nurse. This is one reason I'm anxious to get him home. They have a rigid feeding schedule for him, which makes their job easier, but babies don't do schedules. They can do routines, but I don't believe in schedules for them. So waking him up and expecting him to perform on cue like that is slightly unrealistic in my not-so-humble opinion. And even times when we've had good nursing sessions, he took up to 10 minutes to get around to it. It just isn't instantaneous.

I spoke with a neonatologist today. It's amazing that with the smaller hospital, we see a doctor everyday. Before, we were lucky to run across a nurse practitioner, much less a doctor. Anyway, she said she wants Quinn to be down to half a liter of flow before going home. And I don't see that happening soon. His oxygen was up to 40% still while I was there. So who knows when he'll get there. She said he is growing well though. I can't remember the metric measurement, but it translates to 5 lbs 10 oz, so up an ounce from yesterday, even though he's taking all his feeds by mouth. That's good news.

I told the neo about the random girl who got to hear the reports on Saturday night, and she said she'd talk to the nurse manager about it. I doubt I'll hear anything more about it, but the more I thought about it, the more disturbed I was and I wanted to tell someone about it. Oh, the levels of hospital beaureacracy that I never wanted to know about.