Blue Lips

Yesterday while bottle-feeding Wyatt, I noticed that he stopped sucking.  When I said that, the physical therapist "helping" with the feed replied, "I think he stopped breathing."  She calmly encouraged me to pat him and he relatively shortly began breathing again.  That was the scariest moment of my mommy life so far!  Preemies forget to breathe sometimes.  That said, I looked forward to today's feeding despite our moment yesterday.  At each care time (9, 12, 3, 6) we assess Wyatt to determine his feeding readiness.  If he's awake, alert, and rooting (looking for food, essentially), we'll offer a bottle.  If he's asleep, not alert, not looking for food, we'll put his whole feed in the feeding tube.  He has to really want to feed to get it.  We want him using his energy (when he's alert and awake) on bottle feeding, hence the assessment regimen.

He's still growing, up to 3 pounds, 10 ounces today.  He's taking 32 mLs with each feeding (part bottle, part feeding tube) which is just slightly over an ounce!  He gets one or two bottle feedings each day, depending on how hectic his day has been and how ready he is for feeding.

He is still back on the nasal cannula and moved from low flow (not heated) to high flow (heated) and back up to 2 liters.  The nurses put it well today - it's not that he's moved backward or gotten sicker, we just moved him before he was ready.  So, we're back to giving him the help he needs before pushing him off again.

Wyatt has begun 3 doses of Lasix (a diuretic) to help (again) flush some of the fluid out of his system which should help him breathe better.  In addition, tomorrow he'll begin an oral, systemic steroid to help boost his breathing capacity and lung growth.  It will be a 10 day tapered dose, starting with something more concentrated and tapering off to a lower dosage until he's done.  This should help him get over this hump and allow him to breathe with fewer de-sats in his days and lower flow and, eventually, no support at all!  

At this time, one thing the docs and nurses want to rule out is pulmonary hypertension.  There's a good chance he has this condition (something about how he oxygenates his blood) and he's likely to grow out of it soon as he gets older, bigger, and stronger.  That said, it's not something they treat but would give us an answer as to why he's de-satting (not using his oxygen well) so frequently.  Because of all this, an echo cardiogram was done today (all while inside his isolette - it's pretty amazing).  The images and information from this has been sent to Children's Hospital where it is read and interpreted by a pediatric cardiologist and we'll receive the results within a few days.

And, he's 8 weeks old!