NICU Day 3

NICU Day 3 - Thursday

Jasper showed improvement on Day 3. I went and saw him early in the morning to drop off milk and took this picture of him under the hood. His x-ray a little later in the morning showed his pneumothorax was gone, so they removed the hood and gave him his first feeding via feeding tube. As his nurse said, "he woke up this morning and realized he hadn't been fed, and was MAD". It was nice to see him again without the hood, though he was still on the canula. We were feeling very encouraged as we got back to my room thinking he was really making tons of progress with the feeding and by getting to see his face.





A short time later, the doctor and Jasper's nurse were in our room. This wasn't a good sign. Less than 2 hours after removing him from the hood, his pneumothorax was actually visible through his skin, which is determined to be very severe. No x-ray was needed to decide to intubate him to allow a machine to breathe for him, insert a chest tube to drain his lungs, insert a central line for easy access to administer medication and fluids via his bellybutton. The central line was a really good thing as it prevented them from having to stick him with any more needles.

He also had to be sedated so that he would be more comfortable and wouldn't try to pull out the tube. If I thought Day 1 was hard, seeing him sedated and intubated was amazingly difficult. He looked horrible laying there hooked up to a ton of machines, completely still and non-responsive.

It was an awful feeling knowing that he had to be intubated. I knew that if they took that step, it was going to be a really long road. I still held so much hope that he was going to pull himself out and continue to improve, and it was beyond devastating to know we weren't going to be bringing him home with us right away and had no idea how long he would be in. I think this is when it finally really hit home how serious this was and how badly he had been doing up until that point. I felt so badly that he had to go through that because I can imagine he was so miserable not able to get a full breath.