Eyes and Cries

Last night after I wrote my blog we went back into the NICU to see Matthew again. He was sleeping as normal. He had gotten really hungry and so was trying to put his mouth on the opening of the oxygen hood that he has. The nurse had just called for the portable x-ray machine to be brought in so they could take another x-ray and see how he was doing. We were still standing in the small room that he has and they brought in the machine and cut off our exit. We asked the nurse if we could stay in the adjoining room and watch through the window. She said that would be fine and they started working at getting him into position to take the x-ray. When she picked him up, he opened his eyes. We had never seen his eyes so we were so excited. I told the nurse that we were so glad to know that he really does have eyes.

This morning when we came in he was contentedly sleeping on his stomach so the jaundice light could start to "tan" his back. We had only been in a few minutes and they asked us to leave so they could take some more blood for tests. Here they don't let the parents stay in the room if they are doing anything, even changing a diaper. I left and went into a room across the hall to wait. I heard a baby crying quite loudly. As we haven't heard Matthew cry yet, I had to go and see if it was him. It was and he was loudly proclaiming that he was not happy. It was such a relief to hear a good strong cry. It just showed us that his lungs were indeed working well. After I saw that it was Matthew crying I went back into the room I was in and just listened to him.

The doctor came in not much later and let us know that he is doing good. He is eating up to 10cc of breast milk at this time. They are going to upgrade him to 15cc at 1:00 this afternoon. He has to get to 31cc before they will start to cut back on the oxygen. His blood pressure was slightly high today so they are also cutting back on the vitamins he is taking as he is finally getting nutrition from the milk.

Thank you for your prayers and please don't stop praying. He is doing so much better, but is not out of the woods yet.