The Past 8 Weeks

The past 8 weeks have been the most stressful and happiest 8 weeks of our lives. We've gone through every emotion imaginable, I think. I honestly have never prayed so much in my life! The doctors told us his first week was the most critical and if he made it through his chances of survival went up. We were so thankful to get to that 7 day mark. Also at the 7 day mark, they did an ultrasound to check for any brain bleeds. A few days before that the doctor scared the heck out of us when he told us about all of the things that could "possibly" show up from learning to physical disabilities which terrified us! I cried the whole way home from the hospital on that night. Thankfully, the ultrasound came back normal but they will do an MRI at his due date to thoroughly check his brain to make sure there wasn't any permanent damage from his being born premature.

During the first few weeks we had fun on the rollercoaster of trying to wean him off the ventilator. We started out on an oscillatory ventilator, which is very aggressive and breaths in and out very rapidly, to a conventional ventilator back to the oscillator and back to the conventional vent. At 5 weeks they took him of off the ventilator and put him on comfort flow oxygen. He tolerated this okay for about 2 days and then he started dropping his oxygen saturation. So instead of reintubating him, they tried him on a CPAP, luckily he tolerated this pretty well. After about a week and a half, they thought he was ready for the oxygen again. Same thing happened, he was on it for about 2 days and then he just pooped out again. He started dropping his oxygen sats again and wound up back on the CPAP. Which is a good thing, its much better than him being reintubated.

About 4 weeks ago, they began checking his eyes for ROP, Retinopathy of Prematurity which is a disorder than can possibly cause blindness in babies born before 31 weeks gestation. So far his eyes seems to be developing normally, but they are still immature. They've been checking his eyes every 2 weeks to stay on top of this.

Currently, Tripp is doing well on the CPAP and has been on 21% oxygen which is the same as room air. His weight is up to 3lb 15oz and he is 16in long. We found out today that they will be doing surgery on Tripp tomorrow morning, to replace his feeding tube. When they initially put it in, he was too small for a traditional g-tube, so they used a foley catheter instead. Which has served its purpose well, but its began leaking around it. While they are doing this tomorrow, they're also going to put some dye into his espohagus pouch and into his stomach to see if they've grown any and check the distance between them. Please continue to keep us all in your thoughts and prayers! I'll post an update tomorrow to let you know how the little fighter is doing!