Today our sweet Rowan is one week old! I can't believe it's already been a week since he made his debut. He is doing remarkably well for his age and size. He is still fighting a blood infection and he has the doctors sort of perplexed because his blood cultures keep bouncing back and forth from negative to positive. The NICU doctors are going to consult with the infectious disease doctor (sounds really terrible and scary, but she basically just know blood and infections really well) to hopefully get to the bottom of what is going on.
Rowan continues to breath well on the ventilator. He is consistently taking between 40-60 breaths per minute on his own over the ventilator. The vent usually breaths between 25-35 breaths per minute for him depending on how his blood/gas labs look each day. Sunday, Dr. Sidlinger even said that if he were older, he would consider taking Rowan off of the ventilator and putting him on a CPAP machine. Since he is still so young, they will keep him on the vent for a while longer.
Yesterday, they started feeding Rowan some of my milk. He will get 2 mL every 12 hours through his feeding tube. He did really well with his first feeding yesterday but spit up quite a bit of milk last night. They thought maybe his GI tube wasn't in the correct place, so they did a chest and abdominal x-ray this morning. Everything looked good with the tube, but they did notice that he has quite a bit of air in his bowels. Nothing major, but it did contribute to his bloated tummy and quiet bowel sounds this morning. They will continue to feed him on a very slight graduated schedule and he will hopefully be up to full feeding amounts in a few weeks.
Today, Rowan's bilirubin levels were low enough that they were able to remove the photo therapy lights again. This makes him happy because he can't be swaddled when the lights are on so that he can absorb the light. We've found that he likes to be all cuddled up and he likes sleeping with his hands up close to his face and chest. I can't wait to cuddle with as soon as he gets a little bigger!
The other big development in the last couple of days is that Rowan is starting to open his left eye! He's only gotten just a little sliver towards the inside corner of it open, but he is sure trying. We think we're going to have a blond hair, blue-eyed little boy on our hands. :-)
The nurses and doctors here have been absolutely wonderful. I fully trust everything that they are doing for our little guy and am so thankful for their dedication and expertise. Entering into the NICU, I figured we wouldn't be able to touch him or help take care of him, but we've gotten to do a lot. We change his diaper, take his temperature and clean his mouth out every few hours. For the record, he's peed on us twice already... we've been officially initiated into the club of being parents to a boy. We've also gotten to very carefully pick him up and hold him for a couple of seconds when they change out his bedding.
We couldn't be more thankful for how well Rowan has done in the last week. They kept telling us the first three days that babies usually have a 72 hour honeymoon and then they sometimes decline or have some set backs. Our guy is a fighter and although we've had a couple of hiccups with his infection, he is still doing better than we could have ever imagined. John and I both know that all of your thoughts and prayers are a huge factor in his success. There are not enough words to express how grateful we are for each and every positive thought and prayer. Please continue to pray that Rowan keeps fighting off the blood infection and that he continues to get stronger and stronger each and every day.
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| Mommy and Rowan celebrating his 1 week birthday! |
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| Rowan enjoying some time without his eye coverings. We are still amazed with how much hair he has... both on his head and on the rest of his body. He's quite the fuzzy little thing. :-) |
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| Getting snuggled back in after changing his bedding. |
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