Wyatt has grown SO much since you've last seen him. This photo was from Valentine's Day 2016. Just wait until you see him now. I'll save that for the end.
What's happened in the last year?
Hmmmm. (This was March 2016)
Well, Wyatt has shown us he's a man with his own plan. In November of 2016, after weeks of poor weight gain, lots of vomiting, and a never ending cold, we took him to the hospital. He was admitted and an NG tube was placed. You may recognize it from some of his early NICU photos. An NG tube is a nasogastric tube, feeding him through a tube into his stomach.
You can see the tube coming out of his nose. This was in November of 2016. During that time, he had difficulty with tolerating feeds, showing signs of significant reflux (gagging, aspirating, vomiting) and they switched it to an ND tube. This is the same type of tube but instead of feeds going into the stomach, they continued the tube through the pyloris (a flap separating the stomach and small intestines) and into the duodenum. This decreased his reflux almost instantly. I know what you're thinking, problem solved! Nope. He LOVES to keep us on our toes. During this same time, he was having difficulties with his oxygen saturation dipping down when he was sleeping, so they sent us home with oxygen at night.
(Cranky after his first haircut and right before a trip to the ER)
Wyatt celebrated his first birthday surrounded by family and friends. He was so tuckered out from celebrating, he slept through cake. Which was probably a good thing since he couldn't really enjoy it anyway.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Turns out an ND tube is really easy to pull out. After 8 replacements (2 of which were in Michigan at two different hospitals!) and a few hospital stays, they determined we would make the transition to a gtube. A gtube is a gastronomy tube. A gastronomy tube is a more permanent solution and would be less likely to get pulled out regularly. So on December 7, 2016, we handed our little boy over to the surgical team and a gtube was placed. He had some hiccups after surgery and required an overnight stay in the PICU because he's so dramatic sometimes (gets that from his dad, I'm sure!) and had a heck of a time recovering from sedation so he remained intubated overnight. He was then transferred to a regular floor and spent 10 days recovering.
Straight chillin' after that surgery. He celebrated his first birthday at Hopkins, surrounded by some of his favorite nurses.
On the left: one week old. On the right: one year old.
...To be continued...
