A Quiet Day.....

Today is day 15 in the NICU and Nicholas is having a quiet day, which makes his mom’s very happy. He continues on the ventilator. They are trying to wean his settings to hopefully, get him off the vent and moved back to CPAP (the face mask that smashes his little nose and makes it hard to see his cute face). Nicholas continues to baffle the doctors here as to why he was on CPAP and room air for 9 days and then needed the ventilator and oxygen. While they are checking into every possibility, the leading contender is just “premie lungs of a whimpy white boy”. The course will continue with daily chest x-rays and blood gases (he may glow in the dark by the time we get discharged). He had his second heart echo this morning and all looked good, which means our theory of a PDA causing the oxygen fluctuations did not pan out – but that’s alright, we like any bit of good news. His feeds of breast milk continue to increase (he is now taking at a little more than a teaspoon (6cc's) every 2 hrs), which means we can now turn down his intravenous feeds. As an aside, last evening Nicholas had a good “bowel clean out” – hard to believe so much could come out of such a little guy. Even with this little blow out, his weight went up to just shy of 2 lbs. Nicholas continues to display his fiesty personality and even seems to have a bent toward "drama" (refer to todays picture). When he has had enough of us "bothering him", he puts his hand over his face! As for all the "stuff" you see around him, premies like to feel "cocooned" and secure. His favorite position is on his belly with his feet tucked up tight under him. Until tomorrow......