Julian had a mixed day. He gained some weight, but is struggling a bit with low hematocrit levels. This is not uncommon for these little kids. They are born with a relatively low ability to produce red blood cells (oxygen carrying) and don't have a lot of them. In the womb they don't need them; Mom oxygenates their blood. But for premature babies they start growing quickly and need more red blood cells faster than they can make it. Julian's oxygen requirements are up to 27-30% right now. They'd prefer for them to learn to make their own instead of giving them a transfusion. So, we wait the 1 or 2 weeks for the Iron + EPO to work that they gave him this morning.
When we visited him today Joy held him. It was nice, but his blood didn't stay saturated (with oxygen) very well and when he went back into the isolet he struggled a bit to stabilize. Nothing any parent wants to watch. It was something like: look at Jules work hard to breath, look at the saturation number of the screen above, repeat for 5 minutes.
We did learn that we'll be able to bathe him in the next week or so.
1 comment:
We hated when they stopped giving Toby the transfusions, and gave him EPO and Iron. But after a few days the "tough love" treatment worked, and his crits came up.
Is Shwu-Shin one of his care-takers?
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