Eye Opening

Beckham opened his right eye this morning! As you may have noticed in his pictures, Beckham's eyes have been sealed shut since he was born. Apparently it is not uncommon for that to happen in very early preemies. We've noticed over the last couple of days that his eye has been trying to open, but today it finally opened all the way!

Doing well

Beckham has been doing well the past few days. He was weaned off the vent and put back on sipap, the same thing he was on before the surgery. This time his settings are just a little bit different, they aren't as high as before. He is tolerating his feedings well. He now gets 6 ml of breast milk every 3 hours (that is just over a teaspoon). That amount has been going up daily.

Diaper change

During our visit with Beckham today he became very agitated. The nurse suggested we check his diaper. Sure enough, he had a poopy surprise, so Brittany got to change it! I know, it may not sound glamorous, but neither one of us has been able to do that until today.



The picture above shows how huge the small preemie diapers are for Beckham. The picture below shows Nate holding one of the tiny, specially made super preemie diapers that they put on him.



The fact that he is having poopy diapers is actually a great thing right now. They have tried to feed him breast milk through a feeding tube for about a week. He spits it up every time. Since having his PDA surgery he has been a little more healthy overall, and they decided to try giving him breast milk one more time today before trying a special type of formula that is more broken down. The fact that he is tolerating the feeding today is great because he needs the nutrition to grow.

Speaking of growing ... They weighed him yesterday. They said that he weighed 1 pound 15 ounces now, that's 1 ounce above his birth weight. I don't know how he has gained weight, because he hadn't been tolerating his feeding until today. They have been giving him nutrition through the IV (called TPN), but it isn't enough to really make him grow much. If you ask me, I think the surgical clips that they used to fix his PDA probably gave him that extra ounce ;)

Proud Parents

These are a couple of pics of us visiting Beckham. Every time we go into the NICU we have to scrub our hands up to our elbows for 3 minutes and then put on a yellow gown. Got to keep those little ones safe.

Good day today

Beckham did well after his surgery yesterday. When we saw him today they had begun to wean the ventilator down so that hopefully by tomorrow morning he will be off again.

We got to spend hours with him today! I was off of work so we spent about 3 hours there. I love to hold him while he is lying in his incubator (actually I think I'm supposed to call it an isolette). We spend a lot of time just holding him by putting our hands on him. The doctor told us that we may be able to take him out and hold him soon! That will be a little bit scary because he is so tiny and fragile, but we look forward to it.



Another thing that made today so good was that it is he is 10 days old, so he had an ultrasound of his head to make sure he didn't have an Intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH). It is very common for very small preemies to have an IVH since the blood vessels in their head are so small and fragile. It is basically when a bleed occurs in the brain. Beckham's scan showed no sign of any bleed at all! Even if preemies have a grade 1 or 2 IVH it usually clears up on its own wihout any residual complications, but we were thrilled to hear that he didn't have any bleeding at all.

A few more recent pics

Mommy's hand over little Beckham. This is how we "hold" him for now.

Daddy's hand showing how little his arms and body are. His skin looks very red because of the large amounts of Magnesium that they gave Brittany in the days leading up to the delivery. The shades he is wearing are to protect his eyes from the bili lights, the UV lights he has been under 24-7 for the past few days to get his biliruben levels down. The apparatus on his nose is the SiPap. It has little nasal prongs that go into his nose and provides pressure to help him breathe. Also, they have put tegaderm, clear sticky plastic, on his elbows, chest, back, and other areas to help protect his sensitive skin and keep moisture in.

Surgery today

I apologize for not updating this blog for a few days, the truth is there has been very little happening, which has been a good thing. No news is good news when it comes to the NICU. Today Beckham had a major hurdle: a Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA).

The pic above shows what a PDA is. It is an opening that shunts blood from the aorta into the pulmonary arteries, so it makes less blood go throughout the body and more blood go into the lungs. It causes the lungs to get overloaded with fluid and affects the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs in the body. Beckham was found to have a PDA (as do most preemies) and he was treated with medications on his 2nd day of life. It was felt that it had closed from the meds, but last night and this morning they realized that it was either still open or that it had re-opened. His doctor decided that it needed to be closed surgically, so the Cardiothoracic Surgeon came to see Beckham this morning and he agreed. They scheduled him for urgent surgery and did the procedure in the NICU today.

The surgeon said afterward that everything went well, no complications. The doctors said that the next 24 hours will be crucial time to monitor him and make sure that he is still doing well. So far they have said that he looks good and is recovering well.

They had to intubate him again and put him on the ventilator for the surgery. They plan to leave him on it overnight to allow him to rest and recover and then attempt to wean him back off of the vent probably tomorrow, assuming everything goes well.