Day 4

The Good

Today was a good day for Matthew.  They upped his feedings from 2cc of breastmilk every 4 hours to 4cc every 4 hours.  This will be helpful in him gaining weight and strength to fight whatever comes at him.  It also gets his digestive system started, so fingers crossed that down the road he doesn't have issues with that.  The blue light/baby shades came back on today, as they anticipated it would, but by the night they had put it on a lower brightness.

He had a good breathing day today too.  The chest x-ray showed his lungs were a little large which meant they might be giving him too much pressure, so they were able to ease off the pressure a little bit.  His blood gas reports today were good.  He got his first morning coffee today - they will start giving him a caffeine treatment each day to help stimulate the part of the brain that reminds him to breathe.  Now if Sean comes for the morning time they can have their morning coffee together.

Matthew also had his first Reiki treatment today.  When he and Alexander were on the inside I got Reiki treatments a few times a week, courtesy of Yale-New Haven Hospital.  Today one of the NICU nurses did a Reiki treatment for him, and showed me how I could do it for him too.  He seemed to enjoy it as his stats stayed pretty good throughout the treatment.

I also held Matthew's hand with my finger for a while today, and he seemed to enjoy that as well.  He really grasped my finger with his hand and squeezed it several times.  I read him the MIT Technology Review, and he seemed especially interested in the story about using pig lungs in humans.  Later, the nurse took his shades off when they were doing the feeding, and he kept his eyes closed.  But once I moved my hand out so that the nurse could do her thing, he opened his eyes almost to say, "Hey where'd you go?"  It was pretty cool.


The Bad

Matthew's chest x-ray still shows "fuzziness."  That is the technical term the doctors are using.  His WBC count also has not improved - it actually went down a little.  We would like both of those things to resolve, as we don't want to worry about pneumonia or something else.  Luckily still no growth on either culture, but for now they are keeping Matthew on the antibiotics.  Matthew is still producing a lot of urine, but they say this is common in preemies, so they are trying to reduce the fluids they give him to find a balance.


The Ugly

Luckily there was no ugly today for Matthew, which we are very grateful for.  The ugly did come in the outcome of another baby in Matthew's room.  Yesterday a baby joined the spot across from where Alexander was.  This morning Sean went down and noticed that all the doctors and nurses were circled around her - a familiar scene for us.  Later that morning we went down to see Matthew, and our NICU room was closed.  We knew what this meant.  We came later on that afternoon to see Matthew, and that little warrior was no longer with us.  With the emotions of Alexander still very raw, it was certainly difficult.