Tuesday (December 27)

I went back to St. Louis again today to see Silas.  My cousin Abby drove me over for the day.  We had a good day together.  Thanks for driving Abby!

Silas is doing good.  I held him for an hour or so.  He was making a lot of noise, almost as if he was talking.  He kept opening his mouth and acting like he was trying to spit out his ventilator.  I think he hates that thing.  The respiratory guy came in and said that his ventilator was leaking a little bit because he shouldn't be able to make any noise while it was in.  They adjusted it a little to make that better.  They had also lowered the setting on the ventilator so that Silas was doing most of the work on his own but the vent was there to help him every so often.  After I held him though, he fell into a deep sleep and got lazy.  He missed a few breaths so then they had to bump the ventilator back up to the higher setting.  The dr. said this was very normal and for me not to worry. 

They also gave him some medicine last night and today to help close the pda valve in his heart.  This is a normal thing for preemies.  All babies have this valve and it is open while in utero and then right after birth it closes; but with a preemie, it doesn't close when it should.  So they have had to give him a few doses of medicine to help with that.  Once it is closed they said they will probably take the ventilator out because he will be able to breathe better by himself after the valve closes.  They expect to take the ventilator out tomorrow or the next day.  Yay!!!  That makes me happy!  He will also be getting more milk again (they had backed off of this for a few days waiting on that valve to close) so hopefully he will begin to gain more weight this week.  He weighed 2 pounds even again today.

I mentioned to one of the nurses that I was a little paranoid that he was going to get sick.  They have passed out a few written notices to the nicu parents about cold and flu season that pretty much scared the crap out of me.  You can feel fine and not know you even have a cold or flu because your body is fighting it and you can still spread it to your baby.  It makes me scared to even hold him, thinking that I might have a bug and not even know it.  The nurse's response was that if she was a bettin' woman, she would bet that he will get sick at some point.  "That usually happens before they go home."  What??  That is not acceptable.  I am not betting on that and here's why:  there are a lot of people praying for my little Silas.  The power of prayer is amazing.  That has been proven to me time and time again.  So I am asking all of you to please pray that Silas does not get sick and that I, or anyone else, does not unknowingly pass a sickness to him.  Also, please pray that we see some progress this week and that he gains some weight.   Thank you all!  You have no idea how much Jason and I appreciate your prayers, kind words, and encouragement.