Clever Boy at Almost Minus 9 Weeks

I went to visit Henry around 12:30PM. After getting off the elevator, I ran into my parents who were walking down the hall with nurse Holly. There was a surgerical procedure taking place in Henry's pod (one of the babies transported to the NICU a couple days ago), so the staff was blocking off the pod for the next hour. My parents did get a chance to visit him for a little while and, all was well. I went to lunch with them and then returned afterward.

Henry was doing well. His oxygen was a little higher than before, because he had been sat surfing. It was set around 45%. My sister Carolyn visited. And then, Jeff came. We thought that Henry's breathing was beginning to look a little labored and he did a dip into the 70s on saturation, so Beth, his day nurse, turned up his oxygen to 50%. I had planned to do some skin-to-skin, but the pod was noisy, so I decided to wait until tonight. It was one of those very noisy days in the pod where it wasn't anyone's fault; a lot was going on. One baby just had some kind of procedure done to him/her; it looked serious (the father has been standing watch over the baby for a couple days now). One baby was moving to another pod. And a third baby, Bryanna, from the far side of the pod was being moved to slot right across from Henry. It was best for Henry to stay in his isolette, which supposedly blocks out some of the sound, but not enough in my opinion. At one point when the staff was moving Bryanna, Henry grabbed his ear and folded it over to block out the noise. What can I say...Henry is a clever boy. Excellent hand to ear coordination at age just about minus 9 weeks!

Lisa McCoskey, the nurse practitioner, came by and said that Henry was doing well. They are pleased with his progress. She thinks that the next step will be to add extra calories to the breast milk to help him grow. A few days ago, one of the nurses mentioned that there has been nothing typical about Henry's case. I got some clarification how "normal" Henry's situation has been. Most preemies stay on the ventilator a lot longer than Henry did. Henry's move to CPAP was very fast. So the staff has impressed with Henry's respirator performance so far.