Spells

Owen likes to sleep with his hands up over his head - just like his daddy!

At 32 weeks, babies are taken off of the caffeine that they are given to remind them to breathe. Babies born after 32 weeks don't get it because it stays in their system for too many days. When the doctors feel like they may be ready to go home, their systems have to be clear so they can be tested and discharged. Owen's last dose was on Sunday and now as his body is getting rid of the caffeine, he is having a lot of spells where he forgets to breathe and his heart rate drops quite a bit. Since midnight he's had 12 or 13 of them. So his doctor is putting him on a medication that does that same thing as caffeine, but doesn't have the long-lasting effects on the body in case they determine he is ready to go home sooner rather than later.

Because the caffeine is a diuretic, it may have kept him from gaining as much weight early on. Between going off the caffeine and upping his feeds to 27ml yesterday, he weighed in at 3 lbs., 10 oz at midnight! Although he gave me a nice smelly diaper shortly after I arrived this morning, so that weight could be down a bit!

I'm excited that his weight is up, but it is kind of a double-edged sword. When his weight goes up, his feedings go up. I lost quite a lot of blood during the abbruption, so my milk isn't coming in as fast as I would like it to. That means he has to get formula to make up the difference of what I can't get while pumping. Owen's tummy doesn't like formula as much, so he spits up - causing more spells. So, I'm glad that he's growing, but wish that didn't mean that he needed even more milk! We'll get there though!

He continues to go off of his oxygen a few times a day. Once he gets a little fatigued, they put him back on so that he uses his energy to digest his food, not to work harder at breathing. He really gets very little oxygen though when he has his cannula in - about .0125 ml per minute. As you can see from this photo, he doesn't love his nasal cannula and tries his hardest to get it off as many times a day as possible. Here you'll see his eyes are getting a nice blast of oxygen!

Grabbing on to the cannula

We believe in miracles - Laur and Paul