Witten's Milestones Week 1

Witten has been doing exceptionally well in the NICU. He was breathing on his own at only 28 weeks for his first two days before he got too tired and they put a ventilator in. The ventilator wasn't even in a week and it's already gone again. He's been breathing on his own for days and doing great!

He punctured a lung his second day and they had to put a chest tube in. That has since come out too.

After only a week, he's already gotten back up to his birth weight, and hopefully he'll only go up from here. He has to be 4 pounds before they'll move him into a real crib from his isolette. I would love for him to be the baby that breaks all the records, but as long as he keeps moving forward, we're happy.

He's still breathing with a c-pap tube in his nose. They leave that in until about week 32. I think it helps the lungs move back and forth properly because he hadn't built up enough on his own before he came out. Some kids get off before week 32, so I'm hoping he's one of them.

They tell us that the babies always take steps backwards, sometimes farther than they moved forward recently, but Witten looks great, and I pray for him every night that he's going to be the baby that never moves backward.

He's very wrinkly right now, and his ears look funny because he has no fat. They've assured me that his ears will look normal once cartilage has formed which requires fat. I know that the wrinkles will go away as his skin is filled in with fat too. They are talking of taking him off his feeding tube that's through his umbilical cord by the end of the week. They expected to have to put a pick line in to feed him through, but he's eating so much through the tube in his mouth that they're hoping to have him getting 100% nutrition through that tube before the umbilical cord tube comes out this weekend. That would be a great milestone to cross.

In the mean time, I am pumping as much as I can and trying not to get frustrated that after a week and a half my milk still hasn't come in. I may call the lactation specialist today to make sure that what I'm getting out is normal.

Here are a few pictures from Tuesday. Some were taken through the plastic of the isolette which is why it looks like he has weird markings on his back. They are really just reflections in the plastic.

These were taken right before he had the ventilator taken out. You can see how wrinkly his head is in these two. It's hard to see what he's going to look like because there's no fat on him yet. (My hand was really swollen in this one from all the water that they tried to get out of my body. I can wear my rings again now.)

This was taken right after they took the ventilator out.