Thursday, February 1st

Andrew has made it to February! The neonatologist has explained to us that all preemies have a “honeymoon period” where they start out doing well, but then their bodies start to fight the ventilator and other equipment. They feel that once Andrew gets out of his honeymoon stage that he will not live because his tiny body will not be able to put up with the equipment that is keeping him alive on an hourly basis. Andrew gets a blood draw every 6 hours, called a blood gas, that tells the doctor where to set his ventilator. Today they were able to turn it down again to 48% because he had a good blood gas. He is also having a kidney scan and a brain scan, but we will not have the results until tomorrow. His color is looking good, but his hematocrit is low due to all of the blood draws, so he will have a blood transfusion today. Andrew has A+ blood. He will get 12 ml through a syringe, which is equal to a couple of teaspoons.