David's Story Part 4

The next morning (Tuesday, June 5th) I got to have my first real meal.  The hospital food wasn’t all that bad.  It’s relatively hard to screw up breakfast.  I had pancakes, hashbrowns and bacon.  It was pretty darn good.  I still had an IV in, still had a catheter in and was still pretty much bed bound.  I would be able to get those both removed soon.  David was doing well on the CPAP machine overnight which we were very thankful about.  However, later that night, they determined he still wasn’t getting the oxygen he needed.  They now wanted to intubate him (put a tube down his throat) and administer a synthetic surfactant to help coat and expand his lungs.  When we are born, we are supposed to produce surfactant naturally to help our lungs expand to breathe.  Since David was born early, his lungs didn’t quite develop enough on their own.  Since the oxygen and CPAP were not doing the trick to get him breathing without assistance, we knew this was the only way that things were going to progress. Also at this time, I was given a breast pump in my room to see if I could start getting things going there.

The procedure was quick and flawless on Wednesday afternoon.  They put him back on CPAP briefly afterwards until they could see the results of the surfactant starting to work.  They slowly lowered the amount of oxygen he was getting to see how he would do on his own.  He was starting to show a lot of improvement!  I also got to give him a few drops of breast milk on my finger.  It was such a sweet moment for me.

Around 2:00pm he was taken off CPAP and just had a little oxygen cannula placed under his nose!!  At this point, however, his jaundice levels had risen so he was given some of that great bright blue light therapy to help with that.

As for Jim and I, all we could do was sit and wait.  We would go across and visit a couple times a day - usually right after a pumping session so I could drop off any milk to the nurses.  It was only a few drops, but they took whatever I could give.

Meanwhile, Emily was having a blast with her grandparents.  On Tuesday she got to take a trip to the zoo with her cousins.  I missed her so much, but we knew it was best that she didn’t come up to see us at the hospital.  She totally wouldn’t understand what was going on, and if she had to leave us, she would most likely have a meltdown.  We were kept on constant update with phone calls and pictures.

Thursday, June 7th started like every other day.  Stop by and visit, go back to the room sitting and waiting.  That afternoon we got some great news - I would FINALLY get to hold him for the first time!  Four long days of waiting, I could not wait!

Mmm....real food!

CPAP machine

Emily and her cousin at the zoo!

Looking for polar bears

Having a great time

No more CPAP!

Sweet little face

Daddy with David

Haha, sporting some shades when they turned on the overhead light therapy