Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

This seemed to be the theme for the day yesterday. Baker had another good morning. He's been doing super well with his feedings. He wasn't having any majorly bad O2 desaturations. So during his hands on while we were there they had to suction out his breathing tube. During the suction his O2 and heart rate dropped seriously low, they had to use the oxygen bag on him to bring him back. We saw him change colors for the first time (or lose color really), and it scared the heck out of the both of us. It seemed to take him a good hour to recover. Once he seemed to be doing o.k. we came home for our afternoon break.

We got back to the Nicu a little late and all of his ventilator settings were pushed up. His breathing rate (breaths per minute) was bumped up 30% and his pressures were bumped up about the same percentage and he wasn't doing as well as he was since he got his new tube. Now I'm not sure what all the settings do I just know that when they are going down he's on less support and when they are going up he is on more support. We also had a new nurse that was paying attention to a different baby when we walked in, and didn't offer a status update as soon as we walked in (which usually is the norm). He had a respiratory therapist working on him when we walked in as well. I asked the respiratory therapist, why his settings were bumped up so much. He said well you know we did some tests and we raised the pressures, you know with these babies it's Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. (I hate it when they give us non answers followed by the cliché of the day.) Obviously the RT didn't know who he was talking to because that wasn't a good enough answer. So I asked specific questions about his blood gas and he started answering questions. His CO2 was really high which isn't good. So when we finally talked to the nurse, again she didn't offer an update which always is a bad sign and didn't make us feel easy at all about his night. So I had to ask the probing questions, like when did they decide to turn up his support – how's his feedings etc. We got our answers.

Baker got about 2 and a half hours of kangaroo care and he loved it. He opens his eyes for longer and more often when he's on mom's chest, as if to say I'm safe; I can look now!!! I could have been imagining it but it seemed like he's starting to track things with his eyes. They still wander around, but he's looking straight ahead more often and it's so great. He is so beautiful.