April 11, 2009

Benjamin is now over 4 weeks (and/or 29 weeks gestation). He has had a good week. He finished up his antibiotics and moved up to 7mL/hr, so they were able to stop his IV and take out his central line. This is the line that they feed up from his lower leg all the way up to his abdomen. It was very strange to see it being taken out, but I won't go into those details...bottom line it is gone (for now) and diaper changing is much easier. He had a follow up head ultrasound to check up on the bleeding and it has continued to decrease and the clots are starting to dissolve, so they might wait a couple weeks to check him again - praise God and thank you for praying for that specifically!!!

He is still on the ventilator and they took him off caffeine, which tells me they probably will not try to get him off for a while. I am wandering if he misses his daily does of Starbucks :) They did reduce his ventilator settings early yesterday morning, but we do not know if he responded well to that or not at this point. He has a lot of fluid in or lungs partially due to his pneumonia and also from being on the ventilator for so long.

I just thought I would share some of Benjamin's personality with you. He is forever doing the split finger-Vulcan sign with one hand and pointing one finger straight up in the air with the other. He also feels the need to grab on to anything and everything - his ventilator, the nurses fingers when they examine him, his SPO2 and heart monitor leads, feeding tube, the edge of his ostomy bag. Speaking of ostomy bag...I apologize for sharing this in advance, but I have to look for all the humor I can right now. Benjamin, like most little boys, has a fascination with getting his hands into things. One day I came into the NICU and noticed there was green on his ventilator tape and asked the nurse if he had gotten sick, as they were watching for this with his increased feedings. She informed me that he had a tear in his ostomy bag and he decided to check it out and smear its contents all over. That explained the total change in bedding that I had observed. My sister Jodi loving refers to this act as "finger painting" which both of her sons have explored their artistic sides with and it looks like Benjamin is doing as well :) It is incredible how you can see that even though he is tiny, he really does have personality.

Thank you for praying for our family and Happy Easter!