Oliver's Book: Ch 2

"The Honeymoon Stage" is what nurses in the NICU call days 3-7 outside of momma's belly.  When little guys like me enter the world early, we tend to stabilize our condition within the first 48 hours of our lives, then remain that way for a few days thereafter.  Today, I am 14 days old and have long left that "stable" period of my life.  In order to be sure everyone is on their toes around here, I thought I would really stir things up.

A few days ago, I became lethargic, and everyone got pretty worried.  The doctors thought I had some type of infection, which is a really bad sign for babies as small as me.  In order to figure out what was the problem, a series of events unfolded within a very short period of time.  My doctors ordered a blood culture, in order to check for infections.  While they were already drawing my blood, they also decided to check my blood-gas levels.  The carbon dioxide level of my blood was way to high (around 80%).  The nurses gave me a good dosage of antibiotics for the infection, another blood transfusion to help stabilize my blood gases, and took a couple x-rays of my chest to better understand what was really going on.  The x-rays were a good move, because they informed the doctors, nurses, and my parents of a couple concerning issues.  First, the pictures showed my feeding tube was still in my stomach, instead of into my intestinal tract where they wanted it, so the nurses slowly fed it further in.  The photos also alerted the doctors that my pick-line, due to it's positioning in my body, needed to be slightly adjusted.  The specialist came in and fixed this pretty quickly.  Finally, according to the x-rays, my lungs weren't holding as much air as they were a few days ago, and the doctors thought that it was due to a liquid buildup in my airways.  The respiratory specialist suctioned some of it out, so I hope that will help.

It was a crazy 24 hours for my parents and I.  Mom and Dad met with the doctor a handful of times (so they knew what was going on), and nurses, doctors, and specialists were constantly buzzing around my bedside for several hours.  Everyone seemed a bit worried.

Things have settled down now, and everyone less concerned about my immediate health.  In fact, yesterday was a pretty good day.  The results came back from the EKG and echo-cardiogram that had taken place over the past few days.  What the doctors originally thought could be a potentially serious issue, denoted by a heart murmur, they now believe is a simple issue that will self-solve as my body matures over the next few weeks.  Also, that blood transfusion did wonders for me.  My blood gases are back to normal, and I have more energy than I know what to do with.  Back to grabbing on to wires and tubes again.

On another note, I have been eating like a champ.  I now get to enjoy 3 ml of momma's milk every hour.  The doctors have been increasing my feedings daily, and as a result, I have been gaining weight.  I passed a metric milestone today, weighing in at just over 1000 grams.  Mommy hit a milestone today too.  this was the very first day she pumped over 1000 ml of food for me,  We are a good team, me and her!

Last of all, my eyes have officially opened.  My right eye opened up on Monday and my left just yesterday.  I keep them closed most of the time, but every once in a while I open them up to sneak a peak at the world I am not quite ready to jump into.  Dad tried for quite some time to take pictures of me with my eyes open, but every time he went to snap a picture, I closed them.  This was all he could come up with.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  Today was my day for a bed change.  Everybody loves clean new sheets, even little guys like me!