Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Big Surprise! Day 39!

2lbs 5 3/4ozs

So much is happening so quickly and we are more than fortunate to having God and support from our family and friends to help us through all of this. Blood test today were all great. He remains as he was with no IV's or accessories in that department. He continues to be on breast milk through the oral gastric tube (OG) which he continues to tolerate, he is getting 17cc of milk every 3 hours. As of tonight's feed they are starting to fortify the breast milk with a supplement which will increase the kilocalorie(kcal) value of the milk. Normal breast milk is around 20kcal per milliliter of milk, they will start by enhancing it to about 22kcal per milliliter. They will continue to increase it until in about a week as long as he is tolerating to around 28kcal per milliliter. This is to supply a fuel source for him to breathe and grow as fast as he possibly can. I am banking that tomorrow he will be at 2.6lbs and if he is, then we will have officially made it to 1 pound up since birth. According to hospital calculations he is at 32 weeks. I really had no idea that they were considering him to be at this age but that is what they are saying and it is how they are treating him. 


Holly called me and told me when I get to the hospital that there was going to be a surprise and there was. Check out the above picture of Calen and note the new tube in his nose. This is a nasal cannula. He is getting absolutely no positive pressure assistance anymore. He is getting what they call hi flow 02 through this which equates to 3.5 liters of oxygen coming though a machine that mixes it with regular air to give him a 21% oxygen supply and the air is also moistened and warmed before coming to Calen. We do the same setup for adults but just to show you a comparison to size, the typical adult on high flow o2 system would use around 35-40 liters of 02 versus 3.5 liters to obtain the same 21% ratio, amazing the difference. This is so awesome, we found several things exciting about this. 1. He is tolerating it extremely well, he has been problem free all day on it. 2. This places us very close to being move down to the 1st floor NICU which is for less sick babies  and I am hoping the visiting rules are little different and Joey might get to see him, unsure on this though. 3. When we kiss him on the head, we don't have to kiss oxygen mask straps along with it. 

We didn't expect this at all. Holly and I figured he would stay on CPAP for a while before the transition, but here is the quick story on why he arrived to high flow o2. The machine he had in his room was a SiPAP which  was just operating in CPAP mode, well they needed the machine for another baby so they were going to put an actual CPAP machine in his room but the doctor this morning felt it would be better just to start him on high flow o2 and see how he handles it, so they did. So far so good so please pray that his little body can hold out and continue to breath on his own without any machine assistance. 


Holly held him for about 3 hours today. When they were putting him back and started his assessment he became really wide eyed. It was cute he kept his eyes open for sometime and was just moving his head all around. He is building a lot more strength, such as when he is laying on mom or in his isolett he can pick his head completely up off the surface and move it side to side, it is pretty impressive to watch him do it. He is so cute.


During the assessment with his eye's wide open. Nurse coming at him with a thermometer. 


Terrible picture but only to state a event. Tomorrow they are planning to move Calen from his room we have been in since birth and move him down the hall to room 2056. The neighbors babies are no longer there, they transfered the last one on his hall to children's hospital today. So since he has been all the way on the end of the hall they are moving him down closer to the other babies so that the nurse is in a more convenient area to take care of others. 

Holly had her doctors appointment today that was to decide whether or not she needed to remain on blood pressure medications and the answer is NO. Her blood pressure has stayed down in the 120's without medications so she is good to go without. 


Just to update you on Joey. The other night Holly had went in and started to run the bath water for him. We told him to get ready for a bath so he started to take off his clothes and apparently he was becoming to impatient for this as he decided to remove his shirt and shoes and then go ahead and get in the tube. Ahhh the joys of toddlers. 



I will be at the hospital Thursday and Friday so I should updating those days. 

Thanks and Goodnight. 





1 comment:

  1. wonderful news! what a wonderful expression on Calen's face. thanks for sharing all this with us.

    ReplyDelete