April 15, 2011 Two Weeks Old!!

                Yesterday was Gibson’s 2 week birthday!  He loved his birthday and had a pretty good day.  He is very picky with the way his head is positioned and when the nurses move him to the wrong position he lets them know.  Around 5:00pm the nurse decided to try and move him a little to get some of the edema out of his head.  He didn’t really care for that and his way of telling us is to drop his oxygen levels and they were in the 50’s. Had a little scare but moved him right back to where he was and problem solved.  He definitely knows what he wants and likes.  What really causes this is when the bevel at the end of the breathing tube gets turned slightly and more oxygen is being pushed into his left lung and it can’t handle that kind of pressure from the ventilator right now.  Good news though, his left lung is slowly growing and will eventually be able to help out some. 

Gibson’s therapist said that giving him a positive oral experience might help prevent oral aversion because everything that has gone into his mouth has been traumatic.  She recommended getting flavored chap stick as a positive thing for him.  He seems to really enjoy this and loves licking his lip and drooling everywhere.   

                Today they removed the ‘Anderson Tube’ that goes into his stomach.  The AT suctioned his stomach so that his bowels didn’t get backed up.  They have replaced the AT with a feeding tube in hopes that the bile will now start working its way through the intestine.  Once his digestive tract gets back to normal from being moved around so much they will start giving him small amounts of mom’s milk.   This might not happen for a few more days but he’s making great progress.  The Dr. says that giving him milk will help him heal faster and could potentially speed up the weaning process because he will be getting stronger.  We were able to start giving him a binky too.  He didn’t really latch onto it but it is a start in helping him realize not everything is bad that is going to happen to him.  They like him to get used to sucking on a binky especially while they are feeding him through a tube so that he associates sucking with filling his belly.  Hopefully this will help him learn to feed when we get to that point.  Learning to eat because of oral aversion is a very timely process and is a high concern for babies that have been intubated for long periods of time. 

We got to put on booties!  His little toes are always so cold.  Dr Null (Gibson’s doc) said he is very happy with his progress and especially with how little of oxygen they have to give him at such an early point in the journey.  We are bouncing around 28-32% which is where any baby with two lungs that needs a little help would be at.  His one lung is definitely very strong and is willing to carry most of the work load.

He’s been our inspiration, hero, and example for the past 2 weeks. He’s been through so much in his life already. More than most people ever go through their whole lifetime. He’s truly a superhero. He’s our little Superman! Our friends from St. Anthony mailed us this onesie and Dr. Null said it’s the perfect outfit for him to leave the hospital in.