Mommy and Chance - August 2, 2011

Karin and I wanted some way to keep all of our friends and family up to date on Chance's progress so this blog is what we came up with.  We know there are a lot of people out there who are curious about how our little guy is doing and we truly appreciate everyone’s support and concern.  We also wanted to let everyone know that we are holding off on having a memorial service for Chance’s twin sister, Everleigh until either we can bring our son home with us or he is discharged from the Neo-Natal ICU and we have been told that this will be at least several months and possibly into next year.  In our hearts, we believe that Everleigh would want us to concentrate on getting her brother well and she knows how much we love and miss her.

Here is a quick update on Chance before I try to grab some sleep.  Chance’s jaundice is being treated with phototherapy, there has been no change to the tiny, tiny bleed in his brain and this morning Chance was doing well so they took out his breathing tube and replaced it with a CPAP which allows him to breathe on his own.   CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) helps his lungs to develop and reduces possible damage to the lungs and risk of infection.  He has to work to breathe now and gave us a couple of huge scares when he stopped breathing twice, his heart rate dropped dramatically and he turned blue but they were able to bring his respiratory and heart rates up again.  His respiratory therapist said that this often happens when a preemie is switched to CPAP and we shouldn’t worry, but Karin and I have been in a constant heightened state of terror until they changed the settings of the CPAP to help him breathe.  Despite this his blood gas levels looked good all day.  Chance was also given some more breast milk to see if his underdeveloped intestines can tolerate it.  If he can tolerate feeding it will be a big step in the right direction.  We will have a better idea tomorrow.

Karin and I have moved into a room at the hospital so that we can be down the hall from our little boy when he needs us.  I started to read him “The Hobbit” today and Karin read him a bedtime story yesterday.  Doctor Pane said that hearing language is a very important step of brain development for pre-term babies and at 23 weeks babies just don’t get any younger.  There has only ever been one baby in the whole world that survived being born before 23 weeks.  Every day that Chance is alive his odds get a bit better and everyone here has faith in our little fighter.