3 Months Old Today!

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know that Morgan is doing very well. He is 3 months old today!! I am glad that these past three months are behind us. Morgan has started to bottle feed again and is doing well with that. They are going to change his formula, they think maybe the bloody stool had to do with not being able to digest the type of formula he was on. The doctors were even discussing moving Morgan to Prince William hospital to be closer to home and because I think they need the bed space. But Morgan might very well be coming home close to his due date so I'm not sure if is worth moving him for only another two weeks.

I also wanted to bring attention to the two links to the right. These are the blogs of two other micro preemies which I follow regularly. The little girl Bella was also born at 24 weeks and is at UVA Medical Center with Morgan.

Ok well that is it for now. We are on our way to Charlottesville!

Morgan is doing better

Hi everyone. I just wanted to give a quick update. I just got back from Charlottesville and Morgan is looking like himself again! He is down to 6 pounds 4 ounces which is good because he was was too puffy before. He is still switching between CPAP and nasal cannula although the nurse and I both thought he was doing better on nasal cannula so hopefully he will switch over to that completely soon. But on CPAP he is only on 21% oxygen which is what room air is, so he isn't requiring an increased amount of oxygen he just likes the flow of it into his nose. On Monday he had blood in his stool so they stopped feeding him again and started him on antibiotics but as of today all of the cultures had come back negative and they are probably going to start his feeds again tomorrow. I am hoping this is the last infection scare and we can just focus on eating and breathing. Because he is doing better with the breathing I am hoping Morgan won't have to come home on oxygen, but wouldn't mind too much if he has to and that is the last thing stopping him from being released. Morgan is also doing very well sucking on the pacifier, it really calms him down if he is upset. I am confident he will do even better with bottle feeding when we start trying again. That is about all for now!

Back on CPAP and doing better

Just a quick update. Morgan is 37 weeks today and is back on the road to being himself. Today they put him back on CPAP from the ventilator and his blood gas was better after they extubated him which is a sign he was definitely ready to get that tube out! He is back up to full feeds and they are also stopping his antibiotic which was from his belly being large and them thinking it might be an infection but all of the the cultures came back negative. As you can see from the pictures Morgan is quite chunky! He is 18 inches long, 6 pounds 10 ounces and has fat rolls everywhere :) which is a nice change from the 1 pounds 14 ounces that he was. He also has a new hair cut in a couple of the pictures from where they put an IV in his head :( Today he was a little fussy so we gave him a pacifier and he was sucking away on it so that makes me think when we start bottle feeding him again he will do very well. So overall he is doing great and I am hoping it is just another 3 maybe 4 weeks before he comes home! The pictures at the top are older ones before he has the hernia surgery and was just on nasal cannula.

Hit a bit of a rough patch

Hello everyone. Morgan has hit a bit of a rough patch. It's nothing serious. Two weekends ago Morgan got a urinary track infection, he was put on antibiotics for that and has since gotten better. He then had his hernia surgery a week ago and is still on the ventilator. The surgery went well but for the first couple of days after his surgery he just wasn't himself. He put on so much water weight that he didn't even look like the same baby to me. His face was so puffy. For a couple of days they had him on so much pain medicine that he wasn't really moving, opening his eyes or breathing over the ventilator at all. They have since weaned him off of his pain medicine and he is starting to act like himself. They were supposed to take him off of the ventilator today but his belly was distended (meaning he needs to poop) so they didn't want to put him back on cpap and put extra air into his belly. During rounds this morning they said if his belly goes down they would try tomorrow to take him off of the ventilator but I just got a call this evening saying that Morgan's HERO score (which is a study to try to predict infection sooner) has gone up and they are going to stop his feeds again and start him on antibiotics again!! They said he hasn't been acting any differently but they just to be careful because his belly has been distended. So now that he is back on antibiotics I don't think they will take him off of the ventilator tomorrow. I am just bummed that we have to go through another round of antibiotics! I just have to be thankful that in the long run he really is doing well and that so many other things could have gone wrong...this just happens to be a small down hill on this crazy roller coaster!

Hernia Surgery

Hello everyone. Morgan is still doing very well. He is up to 5 pounds 9 ounces!!! He is getting so big! The big news is he had his hernias repaired and was circumcised today. The hernias were getting hard to reduce meaning not as easy to push back up into the abdomen so the doctors thought it was time to repair them. The hernias were getting very swollen and the doctors thought it might be affecting his ability to come down on his oxygen settings. The surgery went very well and it will make him feel a lot better. Morgan also has a umbilical hernia (it looks like his belly button is sticking out) but the surgeon said that they are very common and they usually close on their own and that it is nothing to worry about now.

In other good news, Morgan had another eye exam on Tuesday and it looks like his eyes are getting better from ROP. I don't think I have talked about ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity) on the blog yet, but it is a disease that affects the blood vessels on the back of the eye. If left to get worse, ROP can lead to blindness. If needed, ROP can be corrected with laser surgery which would limit peripheral vision but otherwise save the sight of the baby. I am hoping that Morgan's eyes will keep getting better and he won't need the surgery.

Overall Morgan is doing awesome. I have been looking at other blogs about micropreemies and there are a lot of other issues that he could have but luckily we haven't had to deal with many issues so far. I hope everyone is doing well.

Morgan is 5 pounds!

Hi everyone. As of yesterday evening Morgan weighed 5 pounds! Wow how far we have come! He is doing very well on just the nasal cannula, the next step is breathing with nothing which is very exciting. I went down yesterday evening to see him and he wasn't very interested in taking the bottle, he ate a little bit and then we fed the rest through the feeding tube. I took some pictures of him being weighed on the "big boy" scale.

Making a lot of progress

Hi everyone. At lot has happened since my last post. As of this morning Morgan is 4 pounds 12.5 ounces. He is now in just a bassinet and has been moved to the transitional nursery where the focus is on getting bigger and going home. The transitional nursery is still a part of the NICU there is just a larger space for each baby and there are privacy curtains. He has been on just the nasal cannula since noon yesterday. They plan on leaving him on the cannula unless he shows signs of respiratory distress but so far he has done well. Another huge milestone is that he took a bottle last night for the first time and ate all of his formula through it. The nurse noticed that he was sucking on his feeding tube so she took it out and tried giving him a bottle. He ate all of his meals last night and this morning from the bottle. If he shows signs of tiring they will put the tube back in. In the past week Morgan has made huge strides. It is so exciting to feel like he is getting closer and closer to coming home! Brad and I are going down tomorrow afternoon and I will get pictures of him in his bassinet and hopefully eating from a bottle!