A Long Night

Now that I'm back at work, Leah and I decided that it would be a good idea for me to stay at the hospital twice a week so that I would be able to spend some time with Caleb.  The plan was to have me sleep in one of the hospital's NICU parent rooms on Monday night and Wednesday night.  That way I would see Caleb Monday evening after work, Tuesday morning before work, Wednesday evening after work and Thursday morning before work.  Then we could do our normal visits for the weekend.  To be fair, it was actually my idea, and it was a terrible one.

When Caleb was first born we stayed in one of the rooms that the hospital has for NICU parents.  It really is a great setup because it allows parents to be on the same floor as their baby after the mom is discharged.  In addition, it keeps parents off the road when they've gotten little to no sleep.  Being able to walk from the nursery to a sleeping room was a life saver that first week.  We spent so many late nights sitting with Caleb that by the time we made the walk to the room we were half way to dreamland.  When our heads hit the pillow we were out.  I guess I'm too well rested for that now, because that's not how it worked last night.  There was so much noise (the commuter train, shower next door, doors opening and closing, people on the phone, etc.) that I eventually called it quits and ended up driving home.

But the noise probably wasn't the only thing that was keeping me from sleeping.  When I got to the hospital last night Caleb's oxygen was at 43%!  I immediately texted Leah to tell her the good news.  Caleb's oxygen hasn't been that low since right after he came off the high frequency ventilator.  I called the girls on FaceTime to show them how well he was doing, and we were having a great evening.  To make it even better the nurse asked if I wanted to hold him.  To that point I had only held him twice, so with his oxygen that low it was a no brainer.  I settled into a chair and she worked Caleb and all his tubes and wiring out of the crib and into my arms.  He was pretty awake so of course I made every effort to try to get him to look at me.  But apparently I am a pretty boring dude, because he didn't have much interest.

Normally when we hold Caleb his oxygen requirement will go up a little, but then he settles in and he does really well.  But last night while I was holding him his oxygen just kept going up.  50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%.  Finally I asked the nurse to put him back in his crib in hopes that he would settle down and his oxygen would drop a bit.  But it didn't.  In fact, it climbed to 80%.  At least part of the problem was that there is a leak around Caleb's breathing tube.  Caleb's trachea has been getting bigger as he has grown, and obviously his breathing tube doesn't grow along with him, so there is a gap between the tube and his trachea that allows some of the oxygen to leak out.  Over the past few days that leak has gotten larger.  Unfortunately, Caleb isn't quite big enough for the next size of breathing tube, so we have been holding off on replacing it.  The concern is that a tube that is too large could damage his trachea.  But after the rise in oxygen last night we didn't have much choice.  Around 2:00 this morning they pulled his breathing tube and put in the larger tube.  The nurse said that he didn't like it at all, but that the new tube was in and that his oxygen was down to 50%.  While I'm typing this his oxygen is at 64%.  At this point we'll just have to monitor him to see how he does with the new tube and hope that there's no damage, or that any damage resolves itself quickly.

So I guess this is the roller coaster that NICU parents talk about.  I told Leah last night that I am beginning to hate the monitors around his crib, the constant blinking and beeping.  The numbers on those displays are incessantly trying to control my emotions, trying to dictate happiness and sadness.  And while the numbers were all running in our favor I honestly really didn't mind turning over control of my emotions.  In fact I probably gave those numbers an unwarranted amount of my attention.  But now that the numbers are stalling, rising, and falling it can be difficult to take my emotions back.  Fortunately for me there is a 5 pound 4 ounce jowl faced munchkin that is in lying in the middle of all those monitors, and despite the blinking and beeping that unendingly tries to grab my attention, he somehow always seems to be able to bring that attention back where it's supposed to be.