Never did we imagine we'd have a baby who needed to stay in the NICU. I had a healthy pregnancy and delivered pretty much on my due date, with no interventions or complications.
I liked my birth experience and hope to write about it after I express my thoughts and feelings about where we're at right now. Niko wasn't breathing after he came out, my midwives started CPR and EMS arrived quickly and took him to Mckay-Dee.
He's been there a week now. He looks so different from when he first arrived. He started out with cooling therapy, where they use a blanket with water running through it to cool down the body to 91.4° to slow cell development in order to prevent brain injury. That was done for 72 hours. We weren't able to touch anything other than his hands or feet because we couldn't raise his body temp. They said it's painful, like being out in the cold of winter. It was heartbreaking seeming him cold and not being able to nurture him. They slowly warmed his body up over a 7 hour period. Seeing him warm made everything feel better. He was more colorful and plump. After they warmed him They started feeding him breastmilk through a feeding tube.
He's had some air leakage into his chest cavity. They released air from the right side with a needle. That didn't work on the left so they had to put in a chest tube. They said it's painful so he was being sedated with morphine. They took the chest tube out, but had to reinsert it because x-rays showed more air leaking. They're hoping to remove the chest tube again and for good on Friday.
A big milestone was being able to completely wean him off of the ventilator Thursday. He is now breathing on his own, but is being given oxygen.
It seems like they don't really say when he'll be out because, 1) I guess they can't know for sure and 2) they don't want to get our hopes up. For some reason I thought this would be a couple of days kind of thing, but it's looking much longer.
They aren't getting positive results that he has an infection, but his lung inflammation and some other protein test is coming back high so they are giving him an antibiotic in case he does have infection in his lungs. They started that Tuesday and it has to be administered for 10 days, so we know he'll be there at least that long. In order to discharge he has to be breathing on his own, eating on his own, maintaining his body temperature and have no changes in his heart rhythms.
I've wanted him home so bad, I never thought of how scary having him home might be, always worrying if he's breathing. Jose is very vigilant at night checking on Che to make sure he's okay, I can't imagine he'll get any sleep with the new baby.
He's still really sick, they say, but he's making good progress. Once the chest tube can be removed they'll do a MRI to see how is brain is looking. He could have brain damage from lack of oxygen. I'm scared to hear the results, but I know the brain is powerful and can heal. I'm also grateful my son is alive no matter what disabilities he may have in the future.
Here are some photos of his milestones.
Within the hour after he was born.
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