Friday morning, 2/18

We just got back from visiting Dinky. We went early this morning because I had my follow-up appointment and Martin had to do some work this afternoon. In general things are good. The one bad thing (but not so bad in the grand scheme of things) is that Dinky's bilirubin is back up and so he's back under the light with the eye patches. His number is not that concerning but because it's not going down they just want to treat it. The good news is the nurse couldn't hear a heart murmur this morning so that's encouraging regarding the closure of his PDA although we won't know for sure until they do an echocardiogram (maybe this weekend or Monday). Also, they feel like he's stable enough to start eating again. The surgeons want him to have a continuous feed rather than a feeding every 3 hours so probably what they'll do is give him 10 mL over a course of 10 hours and then stop for 2 hours and then do the same thing again. We'll see how that goes. They decreased his vent setting to 38 but we're not sure it will stay. When we left his blood gas was a little bad so they were going to repeat it in 2 hours and if it was still bad they might have to increase his vent settings again. (Blood gas: A blood test for determining the pH and levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide and bicarbonate in the blood. The test tells if a baby needs more or less oxygen or other changes in the respirator) And finally, our little porker weighs in at 1040g now, up from 965 at birth. Different conversions tell us different things but the NICU grams to pounds converter puts that at approximately 2 pounds 4 ounces! And so far he's had an increase of 20 grams each day for the past 2 days!