Sorry it has been so long since my last update, but we seemed to have been really busy and by the time I was ready to send an update it was gone 6pm on Friday and most of you will have left work for the weekend, so I decided to postpone.
Since Wednesday and Massimo’s trachy being put in his breathing has been much, much better. He has no more chest drains or tubes of any sort other than a feeding tube up his nose (!) and a central line into his foot although he has various probes here and there measuring all sorts of things which means that there is less medical stuff all round him and is much nicer/less scary to look at now. Of course he is still on the ventilator which is attached to his neck rather than his mouth.
He is being fed my milk and he has gone up steadily from 1 ml an hour to currently 6 mls an hour, and they are increasing it by 1 ml each 6 hours, so by tomorrow he will be on full feeds which is 9 mls per hour. Once he is on full feeds, they will stop the supplementary food that he is currently receiving. So that is all good news.
The bad news is that we have been warned that there is a possibility of brain damage as there have been moments when his oxygen intake was zero for substantial periods of time. Of course J is really worrying about this whereas I am trying to ignore it as I can only possibly take one day at a time. Also there is no point worrying as it won’t change anything.
I have been told that I might get my first cuddle tomorrow and I really am looking forward to it. I have been allowed to change his nappy three times now, which (sadly) is very exciting too. Max has squeezed my finger on several occasions and he now has his eyes open and is looking around a little. Today they took him off the ventilator and tried him on a CPAP (which is assisted breathing basically!) and he was OK but not really doing well enough, so they put him back on the ventilator, but he was doing well enough for them to try and he did last a good 6 or more hours before they changed back, so this all means that he is learning to breathe on his own and is all positive stuff.
I’ve just called the neonatal unit for the usual goodnight ritual to be told that Massimo has been taken out of the incubator and is now in a heated cot, so another step forward!