Moving Up

What a day we had yesterday. When Teresa held Baker a few days back we noticed a noise coming from his mouth. It was kind of like a squeaking rattling noise. The nurse at the time explained that it was an air leak, nothing to worry about here. Mom worried about this and so we asked the doctor about it yesterday. She said yes the tube is too small, but since we are weaning him off of the ventilator we don't want to change it up and risk irritating him any more. Now we didn't correlate this until last night, but his stats have been going crazy (I mentioned this in an earlier post) since we noticed the leak, and the common theory posed by the doctors and the nurses is that because they were weaning him off of the vent. His feedings have been weird as well; he has been digesting just enough food to not alert the nurses of a problem.

Flash forward to yesterday morning… We get to the hospital and he is not looking happy at all. His O2 saturations were falling lower then we ever saw and more often. The nurse had to keep adjusting his O2. He still is only digesting just enough food to not alert the doctor. We stayed most of the day with him. When we went home, Baker said enough with this annoying rattling breathing tube and he pulled it out and waived it in the air for the nurse. They used the next size breathing tube and guess what … he stabilized. His stats since they put the tube back never dipped as low as they were before, and they weren't dipping as often. And low and behold he started digesting most to all of his feedings.

The body is such a miraculous thing, even such a small body. It was explained to me that when the body is low on Oxygen, it sends it to the areas that need it the most – the brain and the heart. At the same time it slows down the less important systems like the digestive system. This seems to be what was happening to the little guy the last few days.

He now ways 2 lbs. 9 oz and is looking great.