Back to CPAP

A nurse that Henry hadn't had before was his nurse last night. Her name was Lisa. Henry's saturation levels were down, and Lisa had to turn up the oxygen on the cannula to 80%. When we got to the NICU a little after 9:30PM, she was tracking down one of the doctors. While she was looking for one of the doctors, another nurse turned up his oxygen to 85%, because the alarm on his saturation monitor was going off (it goes off when the saturation levels dip below 82%). Even when his sats looked OK after the oxygen increase, you could tell from looking at his chest that he was working way too hard. Further evidence was shown on the monitor; his respiration level measured in breaths per minute was high. The resident, Marsha, observed him for a little while. Then, it was decided to move his back to the CPAP. He had done pretty well with the cannula all in all...managed to stay on it 10 hours, which is about 6 hours longer than last time.

He was moved to a new isolette. They change the babies' isolettes every two weeks, so that the isolettes can be cleaned. With all of the wires and tubes, it took two nurses and a respiratory techician to move Henry from one isolette to the other. He was, of course, unhappy about being disturbed. During the transition, Jeff and I had a good opportunity to look at his color, which was much better than I had previously thought. That was a relief.

His weight held steady at 840 grams.

Jeff and I did his cares around 11:15PM. Lisa found about 2ml of residuals in his stomach. They looked OK (nothing strange, just slightly digested), so she went ahead and increased his breast milk intake to 8ml. Hopefully, he'll continue to take it without problems. Last time, we made it to 7ml and then he developed an intolerance for it. So we are waiting with bated breath, hoping that he continues to handle it this time.