Day 1 - May 18th, 2013

Adam was born at 8:28am.  They put him on my belly, rubbed him off with warm towels, and swept him out of the room.  The first two days were extra crazy because I was having to recover from giving birth.  So Benjamin was great and always kept notes of how he was doing.  He also would go visit him when I couldn't and text me pictures from in the hospital.  :)

When he first came out, his Fio2 requirement up to 40% and his breathing was somewhat labored.  They decided that he needed extra help to breathe.  They gave him a 5mL dose of surfactant.  In order to deliver the medicine, he had to be intubated, but it was promptly removed.  My un-medically trained understanding is that the avioli in your lungs stick together when they are as immature as his were.  This miracle medicine helps them to expand and not stick together, kind of like breaking the surface tension.  When you have two wet pieces of plastic together, they stick, and the surfactant helped keep this from happening inside his lungs.

After this treatment, his oxygen saturation went up to 100%!  Then his oxygen was turned down to 21% at 3 L/min on high flow NC (CPAP).  This is the tube going into his nose.  It pushed the oxygen into his lungs because he wasn't able to pull it in sufficiently on his own yet.

We learned that premature babies' blood pressure feels super low when you think about what your blood pressure might be.  Beyond how low it seems, they measure how "good" it is by taking the mean of the two numbers.  They want that mean to be at or higher than his gestational age.  His blood pressure was a little low with a mean of 26 but they were not too concerned since his renal infrared spectroscopy was good in the 80's and 90's.  By evening, his blood pressure mean was up to 38.  

Other notes he took included receiving D10 w/2% protein and trophamine, received 1 feeding of 2 mL breast milk per oral gastric tube (that's the little tube you see going into his mouth and taped to his chin), and Ampicillin and gentamicin for abx.  He also had a moderate caput to back of head.

As many moms know, all babies lose weight when they first are born.  I assumed it was because they burn more calories when they are first born.  I found out a large portion of what they lose is water weight.  Doctors like to see them lose no more than 10% of their body weight and regain their birth weight about 10-14 days after birth.  His weight was 2131g at birth then 2075g in evening.

VERY shortly after he was born, Danielle came to visit and take a few pictures.  Later on that day, Cathy brought the girls to visit me in the hospital.  In a crazy world, it was nice to snuggle them and see their beautiful faces.  Benjamin said someday I would be glad I got this picture, but I don't think I am happy with ME in the picture yet...  I guess no one looks good the day they deliver a baby, especially with the crying I did as I panicked and tried to think about how many things were going to change.

Now the fun part:  Here are a few pictures of day 1!