6:00pm: I have gone almost an entire day without blogging, so I guess that means it is time to put my fingers to the keyboard. Kristen and her mom went to the hospital today... I was going to trail closely behind them, but decided to hang back and run a few errands that I have been wanting to do. Not a whole lot of progress today, in fact, they had to go up on the breaths per minute to 30 due to a bad CO2 gas. They suctioned him out and they were going to do a subsequent gas test in a few hours to see if that would make a change.

Kristen met with the doctor today to figure out what the game plan was. They have increased his feedings to 5cc every hour and are going to work up to full feeds over the next few days. They are curious to see if this max feeds will cause his hernias to show up again. If they do, he will take action and probably do surgery. However, if they don't, he is going to wean Reid from the vent and get him back to Cobb hospital. He really doesn't want to do the surgery until Reid is a little larger and a little more stable. Dr. Moore thought that he could probably wean Reid from the vent faster than what he is doing right now, but he is very focused on doing things the right way and taking some time doing it.

They took a subsequent culture today to test for the three bacterias and if they don't yield anything in 24 hours, Reid will come off the antibiotics tomorrow. They have further weaned the morphine and hope to have him off it within the next day or so. Nurses don't think that he is in pain anymore and will give the Ativan every 6 hours to help with his agitation. As soon as the morphine is done, that will free up the need for one of the peripheral IVs (the one in his left ankle looks like it is about go bad soon anyway).

Reid was weighed again last night... 7.98 lbs. So... we essentially have an 8 pound baby on our hands. In two weeks, he gained about 1.25 pounds.

Erica and David left this morning and Kristen's folks will leave tomorrow. I will start work again tomorrow, so the holidays are essentially over and we are back to the grind again. Kristen starts work next Thursday and will be her first time at work in about 6 months - will probably be a hard adjustment for her. The one positive thing about her going back to work, besides an additional paycheck, is that she only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her daily visits to the hospital shouldn't be too impacted.

Anyway, I need to get back to watching a sloppy UGA bowl game, so I will wrap it up here. Oh, and the picture that I posted on today's blog is of Reid sucking on a vanilla flavored pacifier. As if he didn't have enough in his mouth and nose already...