Days 1, 2, and 3...

We’ve met with the head of the NICU over the past few days. He told us that with most babies Corin’s age, their condition generally drops for the first 72 hours after birth, and then rises for the next 72 hours. That has certainly held true for the first 72 hours.

Shortly after moving into the NICU, Corin still had to work too hard to keep all of his levels up. So he was put on a ventilator for about 18 hours. That is pretty scary to look at, but it had an obvious impact on the ease and quality of his breathing. He was slowly weaned off of the vent, by reducing the number of times it breathed for him and allowing him to increase the number of breaths he took for himself.

Once he was off of the vent, his oxygen levels were all looking good, but he has still been breathing a little fast and hard (although not anywhere close to as fast and as hard as he was before the vent). So he was moved from an open air bed to a little incubator to try and cut down on the stimulation he was receiving from the rest of the room. The hope was that he could relax a bit more and that would allow his breathing rate and effort to come down.

The next little drop of the first 72 hours was that he was starting to get a little jaundice (yellow tint to his skin). So while he is in the incubator they have a blue LED light over his bed. This light helps his body (in some magic way) to fight the factors which cause the jaundice. He gets to wear a little eye mask with sunglasses on it under the light, so he looks like a little junior Special Agent.

The main draw back of having him moved to the incubator, and being under the blue light is that we have to keep our touching and stimulation of him to a minimum. He gets checked and fed every three hours, so we are here for that to help with the check, to change his diaper and to feed him (he is currently feeding through a tube and will continue to do so until all of the breathing issues have been resolved). So we do get some light contact every few hours.

The first 72 hours ended wonderfully. We were able to shut the light off for about an hour and take him out of the incubator. Kristi and I sat and held him and it was indescribably wonderful. So now we are hoping that the next 72 hours truly are “recovery hours”.