Rough Weekend

Well.....there is so much going on, but nothing is concrete so I was hesitant to update the journal at all, but they have kicked me out of his room for awhile so they can address a few things so I figured why not?

I was hoping Jacob would hit two pounds over the weekend, but that did not happen. He has had fluid in his lungs and they have been giving him lasix to help him pee it out so he was up and down continuously this weekend between 1 lb 14 oz and 1 lb 15 oz. As of this afternoon, he is between 1 lb 15 oz and 2 lb's. Unfortunately, he had some more fluid in his lungs on the last chest x-ray and his gain last night was approximately 46 grams which tends to be a bad sign (weight gain that fast usually indicates more fluid in his lungs). They said he is peeing like a champ today and making them all proud so hopefully he can get rid of that extra fluid again.

He had a really rough day on Saturday which was not how I intended to celebrate my big 2-7. If anything, I was hoping for a birthday gift of two pounds, but once again Jacob had plans of his own and decided to give me a heart attack. When we arrived Saturday the nurse came out to meet us and explain what had happened. Jacob had pulled his ventilator out.....AGAIN! This has happened twice before and he was breathing fine on his own for awhile while they reinserted it, but this last time since they were already talking about weaning him off the vent they decided to see what happened if it stayed out. Well, his air sacs in his lungs collapsed (this is obviously not good) so he had to have the vent put back in and it took him most of the day to recover from the collapse.

They also discovered that his electrolytes were out of whack so they upped his IV and backed him off his feedings a little bit to make up for the increase in IV fluids. He was up to 12 cc's of breastmilk 8 times a day, but they had backed him down to 9 cc's as of last night.

When I arrived today, the NP took me aside to explain what they are doing to him right now. They are using this machine that lights up his blood vessels and they are going to try and insert an arterial line in him that will help them more accurately track his blood pressure. They have been having problems with this and even after receiving blood transfusions multiple times over the past couple of days it is not improving. They are hoping if they can get this line in it will help them get a better read. They said since he is bigger now this may not work and is normally reserved for smaller babies so it is a toss up, but they are going to try anyway and hopefully I can go back in later this afternoon. The only good news I got today was that they have lowered his vent settings to prepare him for the CPAP and so far is he is doing really good on the lower settings. Let's hope he keeps this up!

As I said, nothing really concrete to report. Everything that I explained above has pretty much been happening since Friday night so hopefully he can straighten out, get back on feeds and hit 2 pounds this week!