Zachary Update 01-04-2009

Well he was doing pretty well today not too many brady's or dstats (nothing out of the normal for him). His oxygen requirements have been going steadily down and he was at about 26-28% most of the day. The lasic (medicine to remove fluid from his lungs) really seemed to work well. Hopefully this continues and they'll start lowering the water agitation currently added to his cannula. He's still at 1.5 litres. As he gets bigger a lot of these issues will go away.

He's up to 38 ccs x 8 feedings per day. The amount of milk I'm brining to him is starting to be significant :P Not too much of a big deal but it's taking more pumpings to get him the milk he needs for one day. That's a good thing in my eyes. I've not gotten to try and breastfeed him again since those first 2 times but I'll probably ask tomorrow as it's been several days and he's as stable if not more stable than he was when we did it the first time.

He was negative for RSV thank god that's a really nasty virus that can cause pneumonia and many other bad things. He definately has a nasty head cold but nothing serious that warrants anything other than suctioning. He's not had any fever or too low temp etc issues from the head cold. He's just a bit stuffy.

2 days ago he was up to 4lbs 10 ounces with the expectations he'll be up to 5 lbs this coming week. No word from anyone on a "go home date" other than expect it to be around his due date which was in the Feb 1- 6 range. So we've got some time to go before really worrying about him coming home.

He had an eye exam the other day and he's in Zone 2 growth (zone 3 is where the blood vessels are finished growing). With really little babies like him they see a lot of abdnormal growth and the blood vessels may stop growing early in stage 1 - 2 or 3. They've seen a few extra branches on his but nothing to be really concerned about. At this time he'll just continue to have some eye exams every few weeks to track the progress and see if there is any what's called ROP or not. When ROP gets really bad it causes blindness and the surgery for it really may not help though in some kids it does in some it doesn't. Hopefully, we won't hear any bad news on the next one either. So far, nothing majorly concerning the doctors has come up regarding his eyes just things for them to watch etc.

I should be more frequent with my postings over the next week as I go back to full-time office again after the long break tomorrow.