Moving to the offense

How to start? How about with the big news?

Finn Zachary Walker was born on Thursday, February 26th, at 3:07 pm. He weighed 4lbs, 6oz and was 18 inches long. The docs had to fight to get our gangly little boy out of the womb, but I'll save his birth story for another day so that I can quickly update everyone on how he's doing.

So that we have consistent updates and so that no one is left out, we will be posting Finn's progress here instead of in email or facebook. If you bookmark the page or become a follower of the blog, access to the updates will be easier for you. If there are any terms that you do not understand, just google them. I may not go into detailed explanations, but I will try to type in the correct spelling of each technical term.

This last week has been one of the most amazing weeks of my life. Like I wrote, I'm going to skim over most of it to get to the important part. Today, I am writing from home instead of the hospital. Brian and I decided that although Finn was still on the hospital, I needed to be discharged on Saturday night so that we could devote some time to Meg and Jake. Even though they had their uncle watching over them, they both really missed us being home. Yes, it was hard to leave Finn, but he was in caring and skilled hands at the hospital. Recovering from the c-section has been difficult at times, but on the whole, I'm ahead of schedule with it and doing really well. Because of having to pump every 3-4 hours, my sleeping schedule is out of whack; don't be surprised if we don't answer the phone if you call. We are only taking calls when we are able and awake.

Now on to Finn ...

After he was born, he was moved into the Special Care Nursery, or NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), at Overlake Hospital. Because of his lung immaturity, he was quickly put on oxygen and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). Even with all of this help, he was struggling. The little grunts that he would make were breaking our hearts. We just wanted to hold him but couldn't yet. On Friday, he developed a complication called a Pneumothorax (or pneumo for short). This required a painful procedure, inserting a pig-tail chest tube to relieve the pressure and allow his lungs to heal. On Friday evening, the balance of morphine for the pain and the pain itself caused him to stop breathing. I happened to be in the room when this happened, and even now, I want to cry about that scary event. The docs and nurses responded quickly so that his blood oxygenation stayed up while he was intubated and put on a ventilator. They also inserted a central line to help monitor him and give him the nutrition and meds that he needed.

We were hoping that they wouldn't have to resort to this, but with the ventilator, they were also able to give him more morphine so that he could finally rest and not have to work so hard. It really did our hearts a lot of good to finally see him at rest instead of a near-constant state of distress. A couple of times, he opened his eyes while my hand rested on his head. He clearly feels more comfortable when Brian or I are touching him and talking to him.

The docs were originally hoping that the chest tube would only have to be in for a couple of days, but by Saturday morning, another complication arose. The tube was either blocked or kinked and the pneumo was redeveloping. They replaced the tube, and we hoped and prayed.

On Saturday evening, he was still resting and doing well so we went home to be with Meg and Jake. I am so glad that we did. They both needed us and needed to know that they were important too. Before we left, we visited Finn one more time. He is simply adorable.

When I called the NICU on Sunday morning, the nurse greeted me with wonderful news. Finn's pneumo was doing so well that they had water sealed the tube in preparation to remove it Monday morning if his x-ray looked good. Hallelujah! But that wasn't all. They were also going to start feeding him the precious mother's milk that I had been providing, the oxygen level on the ventilator was turned down to 23-25%; since room air is 21%, this is HUGE. And, they were starting to wean him off the morphine. Wow! We were not expecting such amazing news.

That afternoon we took Jake with us to see his baby brother; Meg saw him Friday when she visited us in the hospital. Jakey lasted less than a minute so we took turns just being with Finn and talking to him while the other played with Jakey in the waiting room.

By evening, Finn was doing even better. They turned down his vent to room air levels (21% oxygen), were feeding him regularly through a feeding tube, and he was off the morphine.

That brings us up to today.  This morning I called after rounds to find out Finn's care plan for today (Monday, 3/2). His chest x-ray looks great (can't wait to see it), and they are pulling his chest tube. So that he has time to recover from each procedure, they are planning on pulling his vent tomorrow if he continues his progress. Or, they might pull it tonight if he does even better. He's still on room air and the respiratory rate on the vent is 30, but he is doing most of the work on his own. Later today they are also going to start phototherapy for jaundice; his bilirubin rate has gone from 9.3 to 11.6. Not an emergency, but phototherapy is indicated for his size, no biggie. They are continuing his feedings which will also increase his bowel movements and in turn that will reduce the bilirubin.

Brian and I are still wrapping things up at home, and as soon as we shower, we'll be heading off for a visit. We probably won't be able to hold him until after he has adjusted to the CPAP after he's taken off the vent, but we can be there and talk to him and rest our hands on him. The nurse also said that he has been looking around so we we need to be there to give him some faces to look at. We are both looking forward to when I can breastfeed or when we can try giving him his milk in a bottle, whichever he will take.

Thank you for all of your continued prayers. I hope to write more soon and cannot wait until I can tell you all that Finn will be coming home. Until then, I'll update as I can.