Growing and Growing: Days 108-116

Cutie in a new outfit from Tutu

This past week has been pretty darn innocuous by NICU standards.  Now that the doctors have decided that they will give Benton another chance at extubation with the steroid treatment once he hits 2.5 kilos, the focus has been on growing.  Originally the doctors had upped his feeds to be 30 calories per ounce compared to the normal 20 calories of regular breast milk, but the 30 calorie feeds had Benton gaining way too much too quickly.  He gained over a pound in just about 4 days!  So now the doctors have scaled back Benton's feeds to 28 calories and this seems to be having him gain weight at a more reasonable rate.  As of today, Benton weighs 2330 grams (i.e. 5 lbs 2 oz) and is over 17 inches long!  He truly is growing in leaps and bounds since his birth weight 470 grams and just 11 inches long.

Over the weekend my parents came into town, since this week would have been my original due date.  It's crazy to think that right now I should be 9 months pregnant - not being able to see my feet and about to pop - but instead I have a 4 month old in the NICU.  It definitely provides perspective on why Benton has had such a rough go of it...he should have still been in my belly to this day if he hadn't come so early.

Another day another new outfit!

With my parents in town we spent a ton of time with our little man at the hospital.  My parents couldn't stop marveling at how much he has grown since Christmas and how each day he acts more and more like a newborn.  In fact, my mom brought him a bunch of newborn and preemie sized outfits and he can barely fit in the preemies anymore!  On Sunday my dad had the opportunity to hold Benton.  It was so amazing to see grandfather and grandson together in a rocking chair. 

Three generations together

This week was also another milestone - Benton's first vaccinations.  He got his initial vaccine for HIB (some sort of influenza) and immediately after that he started running a fever which is a normal side effect of getting a vaccine, but the fever stayed on longer than the doctors would have liked.

By Monday, Benton had started having a lot of secretions in his ET tube which needed to be suctioned often.  These secretions are similar to what we would normally cough out of our lungs but since he has a tube down his throat the nurses have to suction out those secretions for him.  While we were sitting there playing with Benton and tickling his tummy, he all of a sudden got very fussy and then started turning blue.  His ventilator starting blaring APNEA APNEA and his oxygen saturations and heart rate started dropping.  I freaked out because just seconds before he had been fine and acting like a regular cute and alert newborn and now he seemed lifeless.  Luckily the nurses and doctors ran over and were able to fish out a large mucus plug from his tube.  After that scare the nurses have been suctioning him more frequently and they tested some of the mucus in his tube.  It turns out that Benton has another infection which is causing the increased mucus in his lungs so the doctors have placed him on antibiotics again.

Relaxing in his warmer

Please continue to send prayers to our little fighter.  We want him to be able to fight off this latest infection, continue to do well on his feeds and have his lungs get strong enough to eventually come off the ventilator and onto CPAP.

Happy 16 Weeks Benton!

Wide awake and looking around after tummy tickles.