One determined little guy
5am call from the hospital: “Hi, this is Debby from the NICU at Children’s Hospital. Nathan is fine. I just wanted to let you know that he coughed up his breathing tube and seems very happy about it.” That’s our boy.
The plan when Nathan came back from surgery yesterday was to give him a day or two of recovery and observation and then determine whether the breathing tube would come out first or they would start feeding him breast milk. They didn’t want to put two body systems under new stress, so this was one of those “we’ll let him decide” things, meaning wherever he’s making good progress we’ll make the first change. Well Nathan decided all right – he decided it was time to get rid of that breathing tube. We’re still not sure how you cough one up, but we’ll find out when we get to the hospital later this morning. So right now Nathan is back on CPAP (continues positive air pressure) like he was at Beth Israel, breathing on his own. He still has a lot of fluid around his lungs and in his chest which could make it a lot of work for him to breath, so his nurse will keep a close eye on him today and probably doing a few extra blood gases (a blood test measuring the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood to determine how well the lungs are working) to make sure he’s doing well. We’ll get the full report at the hospital.
comments
It's been so wonderful reading through your blogs this week!! I'm so relieved that Nathan is doing so well! I can't wait to meet the little strong man but for now, I'll look at all your cute photos and videos!
Sending you guys a ton of love,
Mandy
So... how common is this sort of thing in the NICU? I have visions of him a year from now escaping from his crib, and, I don't know, heading down to the Capitol Theater to take in a movie or something!
Our fear exactly! We're beginning to wonder what stories we'll be telling once Nathan comes home...