Monday, August 20, 2012

August 20, 2012

Today's Update

Blake has been getting fed 2mL of my breast milk every 6 hours for the last 2 days or so and he seemed to be taking it pretty well. He had some green bile in his stomach but it was just from him not being able to digest it quickly. He had a bowel movement for the first time yesterday and has had one or two since which is excellent because even though its taking a little longer, he is actually able to digest it.

They have noticed a heart murmur but they said its common with preemies because their hearts didn't need the valve closed when they were in the womb. But now that he is out, if that valve isn't closed and is causing problems, they will have to do a surgery to close it. It sounds a lot a scarier than it is. The doctor said that the only real risky part of the procedure is infection while recovering. So as long as they can keep the infection away, then it shouldn't be too bad.

They also noticed that his belly is kind of blue in appearance. They aren't sure what it is quite yet. When I walked in this morning, they were doing an ultrasound on his belly but we won't get the results for a few hours. The said it could possibly be that a tube or IV may have rubbed one of his intestines and caused irritation or made it bleed a little. If that's the case, he would be treated with some antibiotics. Or it could possibly be associated with the heart valve. It may be because the heart isn't pumping enough blood to his lower organs which would be a good enough reason to have the procedure that I mentioned above done. 

An ultrasound was also done on his head this morning to check for bleeding in the brain. It did come back saying that there was slight bleeding in the right side of his brain. They categorize bleeding in the brain on a scale of 1 to 4 where 1 is hardly anything and 4 being extreme. His was luckily only considered a 1. But they said they ranked it a 1 at all because there technically was blood present even though it was a very small amount. The doctor said it wasn't anything to be concerned about. It may even absorb back into his blood stream and go away like it was never there. Even if it doesn't, as long as it stays a small amount it shouldn't even harm him and will go unnoticed. Blake will get another head ultrasound in another week to check up on it.

I asked that they print me up a copy of all this info because it really is SO much to process and absorb. I'll probably have to edit this down the road because I may have mixed up a bit of the terms or said something wrong. But even if I don't relay the exact information back, at least I know that we currently don't have anything too major to worry about. I've been told a million times that this would be one crazy roller coaster ride and the bright side of today is that Blake is stable and comfortable. He doesn't have anything life threatening happening at the moment to keep us worrying. I may not understand all the terminology but they did make sure to tell me that we shouldn't be worrying or stressing at this time. So, we won't. We'll just take it all as it comes.


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