The Journey of James Weston

Thursday, January 6th, 2022 Today our M, W, F nurse wanted to get some extra morning hours today since she needed to leave early on Monday. Before we left for the appointment we noticed that James had a rash all over his body. We had been giving him Tylenol and Motrin around the clock since the evening prior because he had a very high respiratory rate and heart rate. No fever but we needed to watch for any more reactions to yesterday's vaccines. It was just too many all at once. We had our eye appointment in the early afternoon so Dad and Mom took James to Palm Harbor. James had eye patched 34 times since his last appointment and the doctor was very impressed. We provided her a printer spreadsheet showing which eye, what day, and for how long. She said that most parents just don't do it so we were doing a great job. 👍 After her examination, her recommendation moving forward is that James patch his left eye 5x a week and his right eye 2x a week. She felt that his right eye is w...

🤣🤣🤣 I honestly thought that once we hit our due date in April that everything would be fine. As a first time Mom and someone without a medical degree I had no idea what to expect. In the beginning, I just assumed we would be discharged once he reached 4 lbs, since that is the minimum weight requirement to be discharged. I figured that once he would be full term at 40 weeks gestation everything would be fine. Well the fact is he needed the safe harbor of being in utero for another 3½ more months. Doctors can only do so much and the incubator is just a clear plastic dome. Artificial wombs are the future. Another topic for later. The realization of everything not being fine did not occur to me until our nurse mentioned that James may need a trach. We were told it didn't look like he was getting off the ventilator any time soon. It was very hard to hear at first but thinking back...what a difficult thing for that nurse to have to bring up, knowing that I would be devastated but als...