11/13/2010

Well it's been an eventful last couple of days to say the least.  Jackson's blood pressure is back down and he is on dopamine again at the max dose of 20 mcg.  They had decreased his steroid dose a couple of days ago and think that may be the reason so they went back up.  This set back has had us a little bit worried and hopefully things will get better again soon.  He had another head ultrasound which showed the bleed in his ventricles is still stable, so no change is good news with that.  His kidneys are once again on the sluggish side and that is related to his blood pressure so hopefully as it comes up so will his urine output.  On a good note his oxygen requirement has been way down as well as the amount of nitric oxide he has been requiring.  The doctor actually said his x-ray this morning was the best one he has had yet.  They have added another medication called ativan to help sedate him more.  When he gets irritable he drops his oxygen saturation and the ativan seems to calm him down where he doesn't do this as bad.  Colton is doing OK.  The first bottle feed went well but his two last ones are showing he's not ready, so we are going to hold off for another week.  Babies don't know how to eat from a bottle until 34 weeks anyway so we are not to worried about it.  They are 7 weeks actually today but only 33 weeks 5 days corrected.  The stress from the feeding caused him to have quite a few apnea and bradycaria episodes earlier today but when we called a few minutes ago the night nurse said they had settled down.  He is doing great with growing and today he is 4 pounds and 3 ounces.  A really sweet nurse did his foot prints in his baby book for us and they are so cute!  He has continued to do well on the nasal cannula and all his other vital signs have been stable too.  So than other than getting stressed out by the bottle it has been a good week.  We have been told many times the nicu is like a roller coaster with many ups and downs this week has definitely proven that!