And He Goes Blue

NICU 7

Day 10 - 11

Gestation 24 weeks 

Both of his eyes have fully opened overnight. Hello my little buddy. He looked up at me when I lifted him for our second cuddle. Again, he was very relaxed and cozy. 

He is now up to 7ml feeds every 2 hours. The doctors are making a plan to get him off the ventilator and onto cpap. 

Day 11

The doctors were putting a long line aka a central line into his arm as I arrived. They do this so they can sedated him and give any other required drugs. Gosh, he is so tiny, It’s amazing how they do this and guide it through to the heart.

There is a lot of gear around, nurses and doctors. When he goes to cpap he has to take his own breathes, it’s a big ask for an 11 day old 590g baby. They have all the gear ready to go to reventilate if needed. The doctors say he could last 2 minutes, 20 minutes, hours or days. We won’t know if we don’t try and the ventilator is damaging to undeveloped lungs. 

At 1pm he is unventilated and onto the cpap.  Here we go, he is doing really well and breathing rate looks good. 

At the first hour and he has a decent apnea. He stopped breathing, his heartrate and blood oxygen level plummeted. All the alarms go off and flash red. 

I am standing there so I put my hands into the incubator and give him a little tickle but it does nothing. The nurse is one step behind and she pops into the incubator. First she rubs him gently and nothing, then a bit more, nothing. He is now turning blue and she’s rubbing him hard. He takes a breathe and his stats go back up.

Well guess I’ll be here all day. I don’t even want to leave to refill my water. That was really scary, while his heart rate plummeted, my heart dropped onto the floor. 

The doctors come back in to have a look at him. They predict he will go back onto the ventilator before nightfall.

A few minutes later and he has another apnea that turns him blue. 

I don’t know what to do, I don’t even know where my arms go right now. And then come the tears. I take myself to the mothers room to cry and smash back a whole pack of Oreos. I call Lee, I don’t know if I should stay or if it’s better to go and not see it all. He tells me to do what I feel is right and if I need to stay, to stay as long as I’d like.

I walk back to our room and they have decided to add a system called NIPPV. He fought to breath for himself on cpap for 3 hours and now he needs help. NIPPV is added onto the cpap system and forces a breathe at a set pressure and rate. So if he doesn’t breath it will push the oxygen in for him. 

The technology is incredible, the machine makes a decision every 2 seconds based on the last 1 minute of data. 

He is much more settled with the NIPPV, you can see he is more relaxed and not struggling. It has been few hours and it’s time to go. Or can I just sleep in that big chair?

Walking through the cold and empty parking lot my wanders to those dark corners. What if that was my last goodbye, what if he goes blue again and can’t be helped. My feet feel like they weight 100 pounds with each step, should I turn around and go back up?

There are hard hard days but you have to go home at the end of them. And just pray tomorrow will be better.