6/8 Afternoon update

We talked to the doctor, our fourth so far, and he is concerned about Ben having oxygen saturation drops that coincide with heart rate drops at night so now our options are to either keep him in NICU, to put him on caffeine and take him home with a monitor, or to take him home with no caffeine on a monitor.  The caffeine will pretty much guarantee that there will be no more oxygen saturation drops.  I asked if we could take him home on caffeine with no monitor and he said some places will do that but it is their policy not to for liability reasons. 

So our new plan is to go to a training class so we can use this monitor tomorrow.  Then we will have to stay the night at the hospital to make sure we can use the monitor.  Then we can go home.  Ben will be on caffeine and the monitor for two weeks then go into an apnea clinic where they will evaluate the monitor readings and decide whether or not to continue caffeine.  If they do not continue it, they will send him home with a monitor for some length of time and then review the results again before taking it off.  Evelyn's sleep study is tonight.  The most likely results are that she will pass and be cleared to come home or that she will have the same issue as Ben which would be treated similarly.  She will stay with us at the hospital tomorrow night and then we will all go home together.  So that is the plan now.