May 7

Thank you to everyone reading, sending best wishes, keeping us in your thoughts.  We're overwhelmed by everyone being so helpful and positive. Keep rooting (and tooting - you know who you are) for our boy.

The other side of overwhelmed is that our little boy is now sick.  As if he needed something else to have to fight.  Now he officially has an infection.  Yes, this is VERY common for these babies, but Ryan is so small, he's really going to have to fight.  Since he has this infection, they have to hold off on treating his duct issue (I think I was supposed to explain the duct, but haven't had a chance yet).  Briefly, the duct is what connects his heart and his lungs - in full-term babies, this duct closes as soon as they take their first breath/cry.  These little babies often need help to close their ducts.  Ryan had one treatment of indomethicyn (not 100% sure on spelling of that, it's a medicine that is supposed to help close the duct).  He handled the first treatment well, but one doctor told me that the infection may have opened the duct back up... So, infection is bad.  a) because it opened his duct and b) because of the infection they can't treat the duct right now.  Frustrating.  Feeling very helpless right now - I even asked the nurse if there's anything I can eat to make my milk help him fight better.  Nope.  Do we want to spend every waking minute with him? yes. Can we? no.  So we wait.  I'm sure this is something that comes with the territory, and hopefully in the next few entries, I'll be able to cope with news like this a little better but tonight I'm definitely going to sleep with one hand on the phone.

In other news, he looks great.  He's not 'presenting' like a baby that has an infection - his colour is good, and he's responding fairly well to handling and feeding.  Feeds have gone up to 3cc's every 2 hours. (a cc is a cubic centimeter apparently)

We've been enjoying our 'donated' food and snacks, so thank you everyone who's been keeping us fed so we can concentrate on everything else.

Oh - I learned something from the nurse today about how to comfort Ryan. She said that gently pressing my hand my hand on the top his head and putting my other hand around his feet gives him a 'boundary' like he had when he was inside.  I only tried it briefly today, but he seemed to like it.

Another interesting thing we talked about was the possibility of putting music in his 'house' with him, or some sort of white noise.  Currently, he's got the sound of the ventilator that is apparently "quite loud" according to the nurses so they're not sure he'd hear anything over it.  This begs the question: Why don't they protect his ears?? One of the nurses even said something along those lines.  There are so many complications for these little babies, if hearing damage can be caused by these ventilators, protect their ears.  One day I'll get the guts to ask about this.  For now, one thing at a time.

With every up, there's a down, so hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to write more in the 'up' column.