Nathan's Schedule

Now that Nathan was home, we were in for quite a big change. 

There were no more nurses to care for Nathan.  Everything was now up to us.  So I took the week off to be home with my son and to help Bekah out as we tried to work out how we were going to adjust to Nathan's schedule.

And Nathan's schedule was quite a doozy!

First, he required a feeding every 3 hours.  Many of you are probably thinking, "Well that's normal."  But we need to remember that Nathan didn't eat anything by mouth.  It was all through his NG tube. 

When we got released from the hospital, our home health company brought us a feeding pump.

With the feeding pump, you fill the bag with the amount of formula to be dispensed, in Nathan's case, 3 1/2 ounces.  Then you set the pump to run at a whatever rate you want the food to be dispensed, in milliliters per hour.  

Nathan was scheduled for 5 feedings during the day.  And each feeding generally took between 45 minutes and an hour.  In addition, he also had a feeding that ran overnight for 8 hours that was equal to about 3 daytime feedings.

In addition to his feeding schedule, Nathan also had a schedule for his medications, of which there were 12. 

Nathan had 4 heart medications,1 med for high blood pressure in his lungs, 1 med for reflux, 1 med to help his motility, 1 anti-anxiety medication, and 1 low-level narcotic.  Some meds were due once a day, some twice a day, and some three times a day.  Normally they were scheduled at the same time as a feeding, just to make life a little easier.

So that was going to be the brunt of our daily schedule.  Just thinking about it again makes us remember how brutal it was!