Day 115 Postpartum. Fancy feet...

Well, it has been another week of set backs I'm afraid. We thought we were so close to taking Vinnie home but it would seem he is not quite ready yet. On Tuesday he had a bit of an episode and his oxygen requirement when up from 750ml to 2 litres of flow... quite a lot really. He was supposed to be going down to 500ml until he started de-saturating and went a blue/grey colour.

SCARY!!!! That little episode made me realise that as much as I would like to take Vinnie home, not until he is stable. I can't imagine how tough it would be to get him home and have something like that happen. So we are staying in NICU for a bit longer.

So why did that happen when everything was going so well? It would seem that the steroids were masking the symptoms of his chronic lung disease. They work by reducing the inflammation in his lungs, but once the effect starts to wear off, the inflammations returns and effects his ability to breathe.

One of the consultants explained his condition quite well by saying that basically the only treatment for chronic lung disease is growth. Vinnie just needs to grow new lung tissue and while he is working on that they give him supports such as steroids and oxygen to aid his breathing. Luckily he is a baby and his lung tissue will continue to grow for the next few years. Although he will go home on oxygen, hopefully he will be off it around his 1st birthday. Although Vinnie is going to be a candidate for asthma and susceptible to respiratory infections he should be relatively fine, but not likely to ever climb Mt Everest or compete in the Tour de France.

So, in the meantime we just have to continue riding this out and waiting for him to get bigger and stronger. Vinnie is now on a new course of steroids for the next two weeks and already we have seen an improvement in his breathing and his O2 has been reduced to 1 litre. It will be interesting to see how he copes next time he comes off the steroids. Hard to say how much longer we'll have in hospital. Looking like a minimum of 1 month, but potentially could be much longer.

For the time being Vinnie will remain in NICU but they are still talking about transferring to Starship at some point. Before this can happen they have to have bed space and Vinnie has to have his second round of immunizations. This is going to have to wait until he is finished the steroids though as they reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines. Starship is rife with bugs and we do not want him picking up a respiratory infection on top of his chronic lung disease... that would be very, very bad and a huge setback.

Vinnie is now weighing in at over 4.5kg (10 pounds) and is starting to outgrow some of his cute little newborn outfits. Thank you to everyone for the gorgeous outfits you've gifted him. It is always one of the highlights of mummy's day dressing him in something ridiculously cute! Check out the dinosaur outfits and booties!