What a Day!!!!

Today was quite an eventful day for little Owen!

First, the health updates:

Lungs: Last night he was upgraded from the cpap respirator to a low flow oxygen cannnula (basically an oxygen tank with a very simple nose attachment – similar to what you see people wearing that are receiving oxygen while in the hospital or carrying an oxygen tank). He was doing OK, but his chest was pulling quite a bit breathing without assistance, so they switched him to a high flow cannula this morning. He’s doing wonderful with it! It looks exactly the same as the low flow, except it blows more oxygen into his nose and it blows oxygen that is humidified. This ensures his little nose doesn’t dry out and he is able to absorb as much oxygen as possible. It’s still considered a huge step forward because he is not on a respirator – it is simply providing a higher flow of oxygen, not doing any breathing for him. Yea Owen!!!

Digestion: Owen has poo’d twice! Once last night when I changed his 5pm diaper, and the nurse let us know that he had a great bowel movement this morning too. These are great signs – showing that his digestive track is working well. However, the nurse checks his ‘residuals’ before each feeding to see how his stomach is doing. She basically pulls back on a syringe that is attached to his feeding tube and pulls out anything that is left in his tummy. They are hoping they will see either some leftover breast milk that he is still digesting, or clear stomach fluids. The worry is that preemies are at a very high risk for infection in their stomach. They don’t produce their own bacteria yet to fight infection so they get infections very easily when they eat. However, if you don’t feed them (and just rely on IV fluids) their bowels ‘forget’ how to absorb nutrients. Unfortunately, little Owen’s residuals showed a lot of bile in his stomach. A little is OK, but there was more than they like to see so they are giving him a break for a few feedings to let his tummy catch-up (they’re giving him IV fluids in the meantime). Most likely so much has been going on with other areas of him being poked and prodded his tummy is just not keeping up. She’ll test again in the morning and hopefully he will begin eating again.

Picc Line (spelling is probably wrong): Up until today, Owen was feed IV fluids through a line run into his belly button. That worked really well – it allows them to pull blood for tests and provide any IV fluids or medication they need to give him without poking him over and over again. However, the line into his belly button has a risk of infection if it stays in for longer than a week. Today, they ran what is called a ‘picc line’. They run it into his arm and insert a catheter that goes into his vein and into one of the main lines in his chest. They showed us the catheter they insert – it’s ridiculously tiny.  This line can stay in for up to two months if necessary and has a much lower risk of infection. It also means there are a LOT less cords coming and going from our little guy – which is really nice to see!

Jaundice: Poor little dude is still under the jaundice lamp. Again, this is very normal for a preemie. His biliruben numbers peaked yesterday and have decreased every since, which means he’s getting better! We’re hoping a few more days under the lamp and he will be able to take off his shades. While they are adorable, it’s pretty hard for us to only be able to see ½ of his face most of the day!

OK, on to the fun stuff. Today daddy got to change Owen’s diaper!!!! He did a WONDERFUL job! It’s pretty funny, we took a little diaper home with us to keep as a keepsake to show how tiny he is. However, the diaper is still WAY too big for his little bum!

My favorite news of the day – I got to hold Owen for the first time!!!! They call it ‘kangaroo care’ – doing skin-to-skin contact with the baby. Since he’s still under the jaundice lamp, he can only be out for an hour a day. Once he graduates out from under the lamp, I can hold him ALL day if I want, so keep praying for his biliruben numbers to go down so mommy (and daddy!) can love on him!

Check out our first family photo in the post - quite a little guy, isn't he?

Owen is 4 days old today.