The slow climb back up -- Day 12

As we mentioned previously, Benton had a rough night yesterday with his left lung deflating; therefore, we cleared our schedule this afternoon so we could spend a lot of time with him to help encourage his recovery. Early this morning we called the NICU and the nurse had told us that Benton's left lung had re-inflated and he was down to 70% supplemental oxygen.  However, when we arrived for our noon visit we saw that he still needed a substantial amount of oxygen support, around 86%, and his lung had not fully inflated.  That was definitely worrisome but on a positive note, his blood's oxygen saturation was at a healthy 91.  So even though he required a significant amount of oxygen, it was nice to see that he had gotten back to a stable oxygen saturation level.  Over night they also had increased the pressure on Benton's ventilator to around 40 (we still don't fully understand the unit of measurement for this metric).  The way they explained this change in pressure was that his lungs are still extremely immature and inflamed and therefore his lungs want to contract/deflate.  The doctors needed to add additional pressure to his ventilator in order to keep his lungs inflated as well as keep the individual alveoli expanded for proper gas exchange.  It's not an ideal situation because additional pressure stresses his lungs but it is necessary to keep them inflated.  Once the inflammation in his lungs has decreased and his blood gases are at healthier levels the doctors will decrease the pressure on his jet puff ventilator.  Please send prayers to help Benton's lungs heal from the PIE and have the steroids reduce his lung inflammation.

We spent the afternoon with him, singing, reading, whispering and watching him.  By the time we left around 6:30pm, he had dropped to about 68% oxygen support and his blood oxygen saturation was at around 93+.  We were really happy to watch him slowly march his way to better saturation levels and lower oxygen support.  Keep in mind that the word "better" is really relative to how he was doing last night.  Last Friday, Benton was closer to 35% supplemental oxygen required and if at that time we heard he jumped to 70%, we would have been terrified.  Now that he has come down from 100% last night to 70% today, we are super relieved.  It is strange how the same numbers can elicit completely different reactions based on the context.  And everything with preemies is all about context.

Toward the end of our visit we had one of the most amazing moments.  Benton opened both of his eyes while the nurse was doing his "cares"!  It was amazing to see him open his right eye and then slowly pry his left eye open in order to see who was messing with him and changing his diaper.  In the NICU, these small moments feel enormous because so much of the news you receive in the NICU is negative and having such a positive note to end our visit on was wonderful.

Benton's eyes are both open!!!

All in all, it was a good day.  Benton is taking preemie-sized steps towards a healthy and lasting recovery and we continue to hope and pray for him and his health.  Keep it up Benton, you are wonderful and are making us very proud parents!