Day 52

Sunday was a good day for Tucker. He has been losing weight for about a week now. Last Tuesday he weighed 3 pounds, 9 ounces, and today he weighs 3 pounds, 3 ounces. The doctors and nurses are not too worried about it, though, b/c he has been through so many vent changes that his body has been working too hard to really gain weight.If he loses weight again today, then they may move his calories up to 28 (from 26). The good news is that they have been slowly weaning his vent support. Yesterday morning, they moved him down to a rate of 30, then last night they moved him down to 25, and I just got a call saying that they are moving him down to 20. This is the lowest he has ever been:) When they get down to around 10, they come off of the vent. Then he would breathe on his own, but he would still be on oxygen for a while to make sure that he breathes well. Last night, I got to hold Tucker again. It was so nice b/c he was awake the entire time. I got to the hospital around 8pm, which is when they usually take a blood gas (they prick his heel, then collect the blood that drips out, in order to check his levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in his blood). They had not taken his blood gas, though, b/c he was in a bad mood. His sats were down, so the nurse asked me to touch him and calm him down. I put my hands on his head and back and talked to him, and he calmed right down. They took his gas, and of course he got mad again-getting your heel pricked is not fun. So then he calmed back down, and seemed to be asleep. I asked his nurse if I could hold him, and she said if his blood gas was okay, then I could hold him. His blood gas was actually great (they even moved his rate down), so the nurses and I got ready to move Tucker. They wrapped him in his blankets, moved all of his tubes, and put him in my arms. Right away, his sats dropped. It turns out that the ventilator tubes had gotten a kink in them, so the air was not coming through. They had to detach it and handbag him so that he could breathe (this means that they manually put air into his lungs-the nurse stood next to him and pumped the air in) so that they could figure out what was wrong. Then they fixed it, and everything was okay. It actually wasn't even scary b/c Tucker seemed so peaceful the whole time, and both nurses and the RT were right there the whole time. Tucker woke up, and he was awake for the 35 minutes that I held him. The nurse dimmed the lights so that they wouldn't hurt his eyes. It was such a nice time for Tucker and his mommy! He looked up at me and listened to me tell him stories about his family. He makes the cutest facial expressions, even some "smiles." His sats stayed fine the whole time, and even went up. His temperature was also high-the nurses' main concern was that it would drop since he was outside of the isolette. I actually thought he felt kind of hot. The nurses said it was normal-99 degrees. The nurses did not give me a time limit, but after about 35 minutes, his sats started to drop, and he was falling asleep, so we put him back in his bed for the night.I told him good night and went home. Hopefully his vent settings keep getting lower, and hopefully they stay that way once his steroids end. He will still get steroids for ten more days, then we'll see.