Not a bad day.

11/01/10

Information Overload

I get up and call to check on Omi today, and the nurse tells me there was not much to report through the night. Good.

I get a call from one of his Doctors a while later and he gives me a pretty thorough update. This is the truncated version;

Omi's blood gasses look good, a little on the acidic side but not too bad. His PDA valve has opened back up a little. It had previously been closing. The PDA is a small tube that closes after birth to prevent blood from flowing into the lungs. You don't need it once you breathe but, he's technically not supposed to be breathing yet.

Nothing to be really alarmed about. His setback over the weekend probably caused it to open back up a bit. They don't want to treat it with medication since it could cause NEC as an unintended side effect. NEC is the little black monster we hope we never see. I read enough about it to scare myself from sleeping well a few nights and then had to stop.

His oxygen usage level is down, and his CO2 expulsion level is up. Good stuff.

His chronic lung disease is mild and should clear up on it's own in time. His x-ray showed normal stomach and intestine/bowel size, so he should be able to start feeding again tomorrow, possibly Wednesday. They pulled out the tube that pulls air from his stomach, since it appears he no longer needs it. Feeding him is the key to everything, so we hope he can handle it this time. The more he feeds, the bigger and stronger he gets and the easier he can kick his ailments.

He hit 2 pounds, 2 ounces today. The Doctor said it's probably a little water weight, so he's going to reduce his fluid on his I.V. and put his sugar mixture up a bit.

All the nurses say he's feisty and take it as a good sign. He tries to fight the nurses when they handle him. Awww. He's just like his Daddy and hates it when people touch him. Again, tonight I just sit there and let him kick my hand while I talked to him until he fell asleep. Heather saw him earlier in the day and he seemed to be smiling at her when she was touching and talking to him.

Here's a pic of him from a few days ago. He yanks on his breathing tube. (Gee, I wonder what will happen when he gets a bit stronger? That should be fun.) And I totally want his badass monster blanket.

I'll drop a big 'ol backdated update soon that might make some of the terms and conditions make a bit more sense.