Day 101 Postpartum. Cracked 100 days!!!

Vinnie has now been in NICU longer than any of the other babies on the ward - the old timer! Yesterday was his 100th day... we are saving up the celebrations for when we get him home though.

It has been an eventful week... three steps forwards and two steps backwards (yet again!). On Saturday we were told that Vinnie was being moved out of the isolation room and in to the Parent Infant Nursery - PIN (last stop before home). I had mixed emotions about this as although this is a positive move in the right direction, I was used to Vinnie sharing a nurse with only one other baby. In PIN there is one nurse looking after up to five babies and they expect the parents to be a lot more involved. I have no problem with that part, and between Cam and I we are with Vinnie for 12 hours a day, but we do need to sleep at some point! Also, Vinnie is a big boy now and needs lots of attention and stimulation. Hard to get that from a nurse who is caring for four other babies.

Anyway, off to PIN we went. We had an older nurse looking after Vinnie and his roomies and I wasn't sure how to take her at first. Cam had forewarned me that she was an old 'battle axe' so my antennae were up. She was actually a sweet old thing, but with a very dry sense of humour. There were a set of twins in the room and the mother phoned up on Sunday morning to ask how they had been through the night. The nurse told her - "terrible! They went out to a party last night and didn't get home until the early hours of the morning". She is a bit of a classic and generally gives everyone hell.

On Saturday night they hooked Vinnie up to an oximeter to monitor his oxygen saturations overnight to check that he was on enough flow of oxygen (he was on 250ml). Unfortunately the overnight run showed that he was sitting slightly below where they wanted him so on Sunday we were moved back to a level 2 room and he was put back on high flow oxygen (humidified O2) at a flow of 500ml. They repeated the run on Sunday night and he was consequently put up to 750ml of flow on Monday. Last nights report showed that his oxygen saturations were looking good at this amount, so fingers crossed he doesn't go up again. This was a little disappointing but it is due to being weaned off the steroids... so to be expected I guess. We did get to take Vinnie for a short stroll around the ward before he had to be hooked back up to the humidifier so that was something... kind of boring walking around the hospital though!

With any luck this shouldn't delay getting Vinnie home too much. We are still hoping that towards the end of next week we will either have him home, or be very close to having him home. This really depends on him though! Lots of things seem to be happening at once now. Tomorrow he is having a swallow test done in radiology to assess where the milk goes when he swallows (hopefully not in to his lungs). The drugs are due to finish tomorrow as well - Vinnie will be closely monitored for the next week to see if his oxygen requirement changes again. Soon we will be having a discharge meeting with different doctors, nurses and specialists to make sure all boxes are ticked before he comes home.

It is all go! Just need the little man to cooperate now....