February 12, 2009

Cohen had another excellent night. No reports of Apnea! Today was a big day for him. He had his umbilical line taken out. The Doctor wasn't comfortable with the vein that the line was in, so he switched him to an IV in his ankle. There may come a time in the next week or two where he will need a PICC line, but at this point the IV seems to be working just well. He is doing really well with his feeds and is moving his limbs more and more. Both his Doctors and nurses call him "Fiesty", but I suppose it was only a matter of time before John and I had a child that resembled more of who we were as kids. Cohen's right eye is swollen shut from the CPAP machine, it was so cute watching him try to open his eye and look at me, but also sad that he couldn't open his other eye.

When I went to visit him this morning, I walked in and he was crying in his incubator. It totally broke my heart! It was a cute little cry, but because I don't care for him 24/7 I didn't know what his crying meant. I had to ask the nurse if it was okay that he was crying. She laughed and reassured me that it was okay that he was crying, and that I could offer him the mini pacifier to help calm him. I gave him the pacifier, and he really, really liked it...so much so that he held his breath. This is called Bradycarida. Babies at this gestation have a hard time remembering to do two things at once, and suckling the pacifier and breathing are included. It was a little scary watching the nurse try to get him to start breathing again! The nurse said he loves the pacifier, but he only gets it for a little bit to calm him down when he is upset because he has "bradys" if he is just given pacifier whenever he wants it.

Today was a big day for me as well! Because the umbilical line came out I was able to do skin to skin with Cohen! The term for this is kangaroo care. It was so great to be able to hold him, but "Mr. Fiesty" did not want to be still at all. He kept trying to lift his head up and turn all about...I felt like I had no clue what I was doing! He ended up getting upset, mostly from the busy day he had and because it was 9pm, so our time was very short. Once he starts to get stronger and grow bigger the more occurrences and longer time of holds we can do will increase. I told John I would save tomorrow's kangaroo care for him :)

Also, the doctor is going to start increasing his feeds to 3cc/feed to see how he tolerates that. Soon he will begin the preemie tests that will help aide in the expected prognosis of our little guy. We will keep you updated on what those tests are and how he does.