Day 5, Wednesday

Day 4: Wednesday
Lots of what happened today, happened in the overnight. Which is good, because our favourite nurse so far (Nancy) was on and she is AMAZING.  She was with Ryan when he first arrived and she's been doing this for about 27 years.  She doesn't have kids of her own, so these are her babies.  She's offered to take Ryan on as her 'primary' when her current primary gets transferred to Credit Valley.  (A nurse can take on a primary, and that means she's with the same baby every shift, otherwise the nurses rotate).  It made my night when she told me that.  She'll be such a great advocate for Ryan.

We went for our first visit with Ryan Wednesday night.  We left at 6:30 to avoid traffic, and got to the hospital with 5 minutes to spare before we were allowed to go into the NICU.  Ryan had been showing signs that he was ready to try a different kind of ventilation so they took him off his machine and replaced it with one that forces air through his nose (between 20 and 30 puffs of air per minute). He'd done well on the machine all day, and when we got there, he looked like a different kid.  He was much pinker (he was very red the first few days) and he was so calm because it was much more comfortable.

I GOT TO HOLD HIM FOR 20 MINUTES.  We couldn't believe it.  Took a million pictures.  We held hands and just chilled.  So nice.  Overall, successful visit.

On the way home, those scary thoughts started creeping in - when things are good, they can quickly turn bad.  I tried hard to hold onto the good thoughts and not let the bad ones in.  It worked pretty well.  I slept. Unfortunately, during the night, they had to put him back on his old ventilator because he'd worked so hard breathing on his own during the day, they could tell he was worn out.  It's a tricky balance - they want him to breathe on his own, but if he's working too hard breathing, he's not going to grow, and they want him to grow. The ventilator can also cause damage to the lungs if he's on it for too long.... Ugh - decisions decisions.  I'm hoping that after some time passes we get more used to these constant ups and downs.