Posted Feb 23, 2007 9:45am

12 days old.
605 grams.
Ryan had a fairly good day yesterday. His ventilator support was adjusted and readjusted quite frequently, and he was much more "touchy" with several de-sats throughout the day. He received blood again. He is tolerating his feeding well. The nurse this morning said that really he is not being fed, but rather they are putting food in his stomach to help stimulate his gut. He did have a bowel movement. His blood sugar ran high throughout most of the day, so they started giving him a regular insulin drip through his IV as well as an extra dose of insulin as needed. He did have his head ultrasound which praise our Great Healer it came back normal. He doesn't have a bleed in his brain!

Yesterday was a very difficult day for us. For the past several days we have not received horrible news about our little boy, but the updates are always riddled with a little bit of "not so good" news. We keep hearing terms like chronic pulmonary disease, he needs more ventilator support, he needs more oxygen, he de-sats without even being touched, his blood sugar is too high, etc. After several days of hearing these "not so good" reports and rairly if ever hearing of a little progress we were feeling a bit hopeless and helpless. Fortunately we were able to spend a little time with the doctor and after visiting with him we left the hospital feeling much better. The doctor said that stress can cause elevated blood sugar, and Ryan is in a lot of stress from simply being very premature. Preemie babies also don't tolerate sugars very well, and his fluids contain sugars, so they are going to wean him from some of the sugars. He explained that Chronic Lung Disease indicates that there is scarring in Ryan's lungs. Babies can have mild to severe cases of scarring which can lead to mild to severe problems. At this time we have no way of knowing how much scarring Ryan will have. All we know is that there is some scarring, and he will need ventilator adjustments to accomodate that scarring and loss of elasticity. The doctor said that new lung tissue will grow and hopefully overtake most if not all of the scarred tissue. The doctor explained that our biggest concerns at this time are 1)his brain--bleeding in the brain is a very major concern 2)his lungs--managing his ventilator support to accomodate for the scarring in his lungs 3)infection--he is at high risk for developing an infection because his immune system is very underdeveloped. Because of his risk for infection he is limited to only visitors from the immediate family. We hope all of you will understand this decision, but we cannot take any chances with bringing any kind of infections into the NICU.