A Surprise for Isaac's 39th gestational week

Dear all,

Today’s post is probably going to be a little long but please make sure you read it to the end!

First, I wanted to give an update about yesterday when I got to talk to Isaac’s primary doctor. Dr. Ishii explained that the reason why they have not allowed us to do kangaroo care is because Isaac still has really bad crashes where his SpO2/oxygen saturation levels have gone down to 40%. Therefore, in order to do kangaroo care safely, they need to have a nurse monitoring how Isaac is doing the entire time and because privacy is needed for kangaroo care (because we will not be fully clothed to allow for skin to skin contact), they will need to have a nurse dedicated to us for the entire time to do this and they just do not have the staffing for this.

We went over again how Isaac will be able to stay in NICU (where they have a 2 to 1 nurse to patient ratio) until another NICU bed is needed, at which point they will need to move Isaac to the Growing Care Unit (where they have a 4 to 1 nurse to patient ratio) next door. He also mentioned how he may attempt to move Isaac to an open bed sometime this week with his only breathing aid being the nasal cannular. I asked Dr. Ishii about the risks of brain damages because of his low oxygen crashes and Dr. Ishii said that the risks are not too high as long as the crashes do not last too long but that Isaac still has risks for Cerebral Palsy as he was born so prematurely. I then asked Dr. Ishii again when he thought Isaac would be discharged and he said that Isaac will probably need to stay in the hospital for 2-3 more months as he thinks it would be too dangerous for Isaac to go home as long as his SpO2 still crashes. He is pretty sure that Isaac will need to go home with oxygen as severe CLD cases like Isaac don’t usually resolve till the child is 2 to 3 years old.

So last night, I came out of the hospital feeling quite overwhelmed and heavy hearted. I know that Isaac has made tremendous progress the recent couple of weeks but the thought of him being in the hospital for another 2-3 months was quite intimidating as I am already exhausted from having to go every day for almost 4 months now. In addition, it sobered me to learn that he still had such bad SpO2 crashes as I was not aware of it before. Finally, as any preemie parent will attest to, any talk about CP in the early days is always frightening. In a lot of cases, it ends up being mild CP and it really isn’t the end of the world but before you are actually dealing with it face to face, it just seems a lot scarier (just like how before our babies were born, imagining having our child born at 23 weeks and in NICU for so long was extremely frightening but we have been able to get through everything so far). I am not saying that CP is inevitable for Isaac and of course we are praying that it is not, but just that thinking about the possibility is scary.

In any case, let’s talk about today. What a difference a day makes! So we arrived at the hospital and the nurse letting us in told us that Isaac has now been moved to GCU. So Jong and I were both a bit apprehensive while we were washing our hands for the prescribed 3 minutes. We thought poor Isaac was going to get less attention and probably will be hungry for longer (and as you can imagine, cry a lot more since he is such a hungry boy). Imagine the surprise we had when we walked into GCU for us to find him in an open crib already! They had just stopped giving him extra oxygen in his incubator yesterday. So although yesterday Dr. Ishii said that he might try putting him in an open bed this week, I did not imagine that it would be today!

And it gets better. After misunderstanding the nurse for a little while (I thought she was asking me if I wanted to change Isaac’s diapers), I realized she was saying that we could hold Isaac for the first time! She said that we can hold him for a little while, before I change his diapers and then she will start his tube feeding (he still only gets fed 10 ml by mouth 3 times a day during the day). So Jong and I held our little boy for the first time today. I, of course, started tearing up when I first started holding Isaac so I actually had a bit of difficulty seeing his sweet face. But it was so so wonderful! Jong got to kiss Isaac a LOT. I was more reserved with the kissing since I have been feeling a little under the weather so I only kiss the top of his head once. My mom actually got a little upset at me for putting my face too close to Isaac when she saw the video but, hey, it was my first time to hold my little boy! So please pray that Isaac did not catch anything from me and please pray that I completely heal 100% soon because I want to hold and kiss him every day! Isaac is so light. He felt like nothing. But being able to hold this tiny little featherweight boy made both of our hearts SO full.

Its not kangaroo care, and it was only for a short time, but we will take it. What a blessed night it was tonight!

Here are the videos of the blessed event (Blogger is not letting me load images so I am going to have to post the pictures later):





In Christ,

Sonia