Acronyms for Everyone!

Dear Samuel,

Not a whole lot of change today, which is what we like.

You did have a few ABD's today (We are learning all kinds of acronyms through all of this....ABD stands for Apnea, Brady, De-Sat) but nothing like you did yesterday; at least anything prolonged. Unfortunately, (Or Fortunately?) this is fairly common in premies. However, all of the tests/cultures that they took yesterday have all come back negative still. One thing they did to counteract these ABD's was to increase your overall dose of caffeine but split it into two doses per day. So far, this seems to be doing the trick.

Other than that, there hasn't been any change today. Your weight is barely up at 1 pounds 11.9 ounces

Your mom and I only came down once today. We think Isaac got us both sick and don't want to run the risk of giving it to you. We are hoping to give you that bath that you desperately need, tomorrow.

I'm glad that these are starting to be short and shorter. I can't wait for the day when I can stop writing these! Not that I don't like talking/writing about you.....Just that I can't wait until the day when we get to take you home.

Love,
Mom and Dad

A Small Scare

Dear Samuel,

Well, you gave us a bit of a scare today......

Every time we have had a bath scheduled, you seem to weasel your way out of it by having a "bad" day (Last time you came back positive for your infection, another time you had been having a rough day with de-sats). Today you began to have an apnea attack (Meaning you stopped remembering to breath...very similar to sleep apnea) and de-saturate. Enough so, that your nurse said that your color changed and you looked "mottled" (blotchy, spotty). At one point, you had a 3 minute span of time where they had difficulty getting your saturation levels and heart rate back to normal. There was a small chance you would have had to be re-intubated (vent tube) if they were unable to get your levels back but luckily that wasn't the case.

Of course, by the time your Mom and I got there all of your levels were A-Okay for around 2 hours. Sometimes, we think your nurses like to lie to us....When you are having a good day before we get there to visit, you de-sat right when we walk in. If you are having a bad day, we walk in and everything is fine. But really, your nurses are awesome...you just like to do the opposite of what they tell us.

Your doctors and nurses ran a bunch of tests to try to find the cause of this little spell but everything came back negative (Blood tests will be cultured for 5 days again). X-Ray showed NO signs on pneumonia, so that's good.

Some small changes today, in terms of feedings. You were bumped up to 15 ccs of breastmilk every 3 hours being feed over a 2 hour period with an hour between feedings to vent bubbles out of your tummy. They also had to bump up your respiration rate to 30 bpm after you little apnea spell. O2 was back down to 48% when we left for the night.

Your weight is still at 1 pound 11.5 ounces.

So, we are supposed to give you a bath tomorrow. This better not happen again!

Love,
Mom and Dad