Day 22 - 3 weeks

Thursday, January 21st

WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN?

Morning: Happy 3 Weeks today!  Feed is at his best yet of 13 ML with 26 calories. His oxygen is right at 60% with 15 and 33 settings still. No change here. James gets a new doctor today.  We will see what the goals are for the next week. 
Our targets are to be at 10 on pressure and 25 on amplitude with FIO2 between 30%-40%. Hoping to get there this week. 
While mom was at the doctors getting tested for what’s causing an allergic reaction and skin irritation, dad got some downtime with James. 

Evening:  Weighed in at 810g. Feed is up to 14 ML now and will increase every 12 hours up to 17 ML since he’s tolerating the advances, James won’t be needing the TPN for now. So they are removing the PICC line tonight. Steroid is going in orally. Morphine will go in orally too. Gas came back positive so the amplitude went down to 31.  

Echo results show that the PDA was closed.  Following closely the pulmonary hypertension in the blood pressure in his lungs, giving blood flow a hard time and could hurt the lung development. This is possible as a long term effect of staying on the oscillator - not a specific time frame, but something we are monitoring. 

Right now - needs nutrition and overall growth which will help the lungs development. 

Course of the steroid is to help James get the breathing tubes out, but right now, it’s not looking like this course will lead to that outcome. X-ray is looking better with the dark spots. The next steroid will be in a few weeks, maybe a month, since the potential drawbacks of too much steroids could affect James negatively affected others growth or other functions. 

Surfactin- once out of the womb, the baby begins developing it on his own. Later doses in the term can show negative outcomes with clogging. 

Goals for this week:  keeping PICC line out, no new infections, 17 ML with 26 calories, gain 100-200g, amplitude to mid-20s, pressure to 12, and oxygen to 30-40% ... however slow and steady progress is all we are looking for.