02/13/2007

Well, for those of you following who live here in the QC, obviously Erik and I won't be holding our son tonight. I'm starting to think there is some invisible force that does not want us to hold him. Anyway, weather is not permitting. Obviously if there were an emergency of some sort we would go come hell or high water, but Emery is stable. I talked to the nurse today and they had actually written on the chart that mom and dad would be up today to hold baby, and they did want us to come but no one wants us to risk it. The IDOT travel website is not recommending travel period. In fact, tow trucks are prohibited on the highways right now, so no holding love bug tonight. We will go tomorrow, though, and it seems appropriate to hold my little love on Valentine's Day. He's still tolerating the vent but they did have to go up on his settings a bit. Not much. He's getting 35 breaths a minute now to lower his CO2 and the highest he's been going is 45% oxygen, which is pretty good for him. His CO2 is always lousy but I think that's to be expected from the BPD. They went up on his feedings to 28 mL every 3 hours and he weighs.. get this, 3 pounds 11.5 ounces!! I imagine within the week he will weigh 4 pounds. He will be 2 months old on Sunday and that's about the time he should hit the 4-pound mark, if not just a little later. The doctors didn't seem overly concerned about his CO2 and were not planning on a vent change as of yet. In fact, they are only getting blood gases once a day again and once-a-day chest x-rays, too. He seems to be comfortable, he's eating digesting well, and the nurse said he has beautiful skin and looks like a healthy baby. He was a little irritable periodically and the nurse tried to actually sit him up on a boppy pillow for a bit to try and change positions for him. He tolerated it only for a short time. So, it's sort of funny and sort of sad but I like to follow other preemie stories on line and try to see how Emery stacks up comparitively, and I never really have written about what Emery's really like because I didn't want anyone to freak out or think "Thank God my baby is not like that!" I just have this strange desire for Emery to compare well to other babies. I don't know why. I have been told since day one never to compare Emery to any other baby, and he isn't breaking records for best or worst baby. He's on the worse side of lung function but on the better side of growth. He's more labile but hasn't required much ventilator support. So here's the deal. This is mostly for the nurses out there and for the other moms of preemies. Emery has had 16 doses of surfactant thus far, with the most recent one being for the pneumonia. As of all of my net surfing I have yet to find a baby requiring that much surfactant. His settings on the SensorMedics were usually a MAP of 16/17 with a power of 2.5 to 3 and a Hz of 10. His vent settings now on the Servo-I are 35 breaths a minute with a PEEP of 8. His CO2 runs, on an average, 65%. When it climbs over 70% they make changes. His range is 50% to 70%. So for the nurses and preemie moms, you can appreciate that Emery's lungs are just plain bad but only two nurses up there seem to think that Emery has no hope. Everyone just plugs along and treats him. One nurse said the other day that she'd seen chest x-rays 'as bad and better' but 'not worse.' One nurse came in to tell me how she worked on the BPD unit back in the 1990s and the kids stayed there until their third birthday. I told her Emery had BPD, and she 'Oh, yeah, but not like these kids. I doubt he'll go home with a trache at 3 years old.' I think where Emery is at now, his lungs won't really 'open up.' Now it's just time and patience to grow new tissue and hope he doesn't get any kind of fatal infection. There. I feel like I got some nasty confession out. I don't know why I was tyring to hide it. Anyway, if they have to move Emery to a jet, we can still hold him!