Day One

What a day! After we finally got back to my room and I posted the note this morning, I had the best 5 hours sleep I've gotten in a long time! Patrick has been doing so well, this is an entirely different way to start!

I went down to check on him right away when I woke up, and his ventilator settings were so low they decided to put him on the CPAP. The CPAP is pretty much these prongs that go up your nose and it provides positive air pressure to help keep his lungs open. I think. Don't ask me what the C stands for.

They hadn't made any changes when I went back up to my room, but when Jon went down later with our friend Ben, they extubated Patrick and he just started screaming! He was so not happy with the whole situation, but the good thing about him getting upset is that it makes him take deep breaths and his O2 sats go up. It's still amazing to hear him cry.

He's been doing a good job on the CPAP all day, but he still has episodes where he takes short shallow breaths, so they decided not to move him to just the nasal cannula. He's been on close to room air for most of the day, which on the settings is 21%. He's on 24% right now just because he's had those episodes, but he's still doing great.

As far as other medications he's getting, I don't think there's a whole lot. I know they run an antibiotic, and other than that I think he's just getting fluids and some nutritional stuff- TPN. They might even start a feeding tube tomorrow and get him some breast milk! It took such a long time to get Will started on food, hearing that he could start tomorrow was, again, amazing.

On the last message I mentioned they were trying to get his blood pressure up, and that doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. He's been staying in the perfect range all day long.

They did start up the biliruben light for jaundice, so he's wearing purple eye covers right now. They took off his hat and you can really see all his hair!

Other than that, he hates getting his diaper changed, he hates getting his temperature taken, the blood pressure cuff and being moved. Can't really blame the kid, though! He'll get used to it. They put up his hand and foot prints tonight - they're huge!

I'm going home tomorrow, so I'll make sure I find the cord for our camera and get some pictures up here.

Thank you so much for all the prayers and wishes. It really feels like such a miracle that Patrick is doing so well and there's a lot to be said for positive thoughts. We are just so relieved and happy.