When we got there this morning, they had removed the CPAP cap and the blue lights. He’s now on nasal prongs. He’s still receiving oxygen, and it’s now between 22 and 24%. Surprisingly, she also increased his milk again to 50mls, but he seems to be happy with it today.
I asked Kate whether he had poo’ed, and she said yes, quite a few over night, and that's why they increased the food again.
I asked whether he’d wee’d on anyone yet. LOL! She said yes, last night all over her. And then she told Lance not to worry – he has a good strong stream. PMSL!!
This was taken this morning…

This afternoon when we got there his eyes were open.    We got to chat to him for quite a while.  He was making the cutest noises.
We noticed that he had a bandage over his belly button.
Kate arrived, and said “Can you see the difference?”, so we said “yes, the white cord has come out”. She said “Do you know what that means?”.
I said “You don’t need to take more blood? Or give him another transfusion?”
She says “Yes, and…”
I looked at L, and then said “Can I hold him?”

I just clapped when she told me I could. Poor Connor got such a fright. And, yes, we'd left the damn camera at home this afternoon.

We spent the afternoon cuddling him .  I was in tears at first.  Both of us were so overwhelmed.  We didn't think we'd be able to do this for at least another day.  He fell asleep as soon as he was in my arms.

At feeding time, I got to change his nappy too!  OK, it was a pooey one, but excellent!!  Then she left us again with the syringe of milk which we gave him through his tube (really just held it and kept topping it up, but still, we fed him!!)

Oh happy days!!

They’re going to monitor his oxygen levels just with the monitors now, and not by taking blood samples.  They are going to make sure that the one line stays above 92 constantly.  If it does, then he doesn’t need more oxygen and he can come off the machines.  He’s also only going to have one more day of antibiotics now that all the lines have been removed, and then he’ll be drip free!!

Now that wr’ve seen more of him today without so many tubes and with his eyes not so puffy, we’ve realised that he doesn’t look that similar to Bradley.  They have the same feet, and toes, but their faces are quite different.

The doc put him back on the blue lights, as he was looking a bit yellow.  She didn’t want to test his blood because he’s had so many blood tests lately, she’ll test his billirubin levels again in the morning.  She thinks he’s got jaundice again from the red blood cells he got a few days ago.
She also increased his feeds to 40mls.

It was tough to be there today.  He can’t see with the mask over his eyes (the mask protects his eyes from the blue light).  So, he couldn’t see anything even when he was awake.  It’s terrible.

He seems to have adapted to the CPAP machine quite well.  His oxygen levels are down to 25% at a pressure of 3 now.  We’re hoping that he can come off it tomorrow, but I can see he still needs it at times, so we’ll see.   You can see in the pics below, that the CPAP cap is attached to his head with straps.   It looks a lot worse than the other machine, but it’s less invasive.

I personally don’t think that he’s coping with the 40ml’s of food.  I don’t think she’ll increase it tomorrow again.  The nurse, Kate, said that even though the aspirates (what they remove from his tummy before the next feed – it gets measured to see how much he’s absorbed) are quite high, they have curdled which means his tummy is working.  At least he’s not throwing up.

He has found his voice though .  Kate said he was screaming at her this morning.  LOL!!

Hope he’ll have a good night, and we can see his eyes tomorrow.

Some pics taken this morning…

All the machine’s he is attached to today…

Under the lights…

This evening after dinner Lance and Bradley were wrestling on the couch…

Lance:  Come, my son, we need to have a bath

Silence

Bradley:  I’m not your son, I’m a boy
Lance:  But you are my son
Bradley:  Daddy, a sun shines brightly in the morning, I’m just a boy
Lance:  Ooooh, I see

LOL!!

Bradley:  I’m Bradley Craig V….  and I’;m Connor’s big brother

Wow!!!  that’s the first time he’s spoken about Connor since last week without crying.  

Today was a good day.

When we got there this morning, Dr Simmank was about to see him.  She took him off the ventilator, and onto the CPAP machine, and increased his feeds to 30mls.  Hopefully he’ll only be on the CPAP for 1 or 2 days, and then he might just need the nasal oxygen tubes for a while.
It hit home today how sick he has been.  She said that he's doing very well, “considering how sick he was” :-0.

It was a difficult morning, because he was more awake.  They couldn’t sedate him because they had to remove the pipes.  So he woke up at about 10:30, and we had to try and placate him until 12 when they replaced the machines (we didn't stay for that would've been too traumatic for us).

When we got back to the ICU after lunch, he was hooked up to the CPAP.    So far so good.  He woke up at 14:30, and when we left at 16:00 to pick up Bradley he was still awake.  It was very hard to leave him while he was awake, but we had to fetch Bradley.
It was the first time Lance has seen his eyes .
His eyes are VERY swollen because of the straps around his head now to hold the CPAP tubes in place.  So he can barely open them, but the nurse said that they’ll be fine once he's off the machine.
His voice is very hoarse.  You can see that he gets a bit of a fright when he makes a noise.  LOL sweetie pie.  He hasn’t quite figured out yet that he can make a noise, and he still make soundless cries.  But I’m sure by tomorrow he’ll be screaming the place down  .
We spent the afternoon talking to him and holding his hands.  He had Lance’s finger in one hand and my finger in the other hand, and he wouldn’t let go .
When he got fed at 15:00, the nurse put some of the milk on his dummy for him to taste it.  They are giving him the dummy to suck while the tube is feeding him to get him used to sucking while eating.

Hopefully he has a good night.

I don’t know how to explain this to Bradley.  I tried tonight.

He thinks he’s making Connor sick   and that’s why he can’t see him.

Just got back home from spending the morning with Connor.

He looks so much better today.  He’;s actually pink
Dr Simmank was there when we got there.  They turned off the blue lights and took his mask off while we were there!  YAY!!!  His billirubin levels are now 8.5.
Overnight, apparently he went a bit wild fighting the ventilator and trying to take the pipes out, so they had to sedate him .  I suppose that is a good sign, because it means he's fighting now.  The pressure is now at 12bpm, but they’ve increased the oxygen to 38%.
The paed was in 2 minds whether to take him off the ventilator today, or leave him for another day, before moving him to a CBAP machine (no idea what that is yet LOL).  So, she decided to leave him just in case.  She explained that there's a fine line between leaving him too long with lines etc as every line in his body is an extra risk of infection :-0.
He was given 40ml's of blood this morning as well.  His BP levels were low.  They explained that it's quite normal because they take so much blood for testing and his body isn't replenishing it fast enough.  After that was over, he looked so good!!  That really made him pink!
She increased his milk to 20ml's every 3 hours.  You can see that he's hungry now .  She said we should start seeing improvements now.
He’s really enjoying his dummy now which is also a good sign!
His skin is sooo dry, but they can’t cream it too much under the lights because the it’ll burn his skin.

He absorbed his double feed so well while we were there, and then he just slept holding my hand. Lance still hasn’;t seen him with his eyes open, but experienced the soundless crying for the first time today.  Lance went home to sleep and left me there until they did his physio and suctioning (I couldn’t handle seeing that yet).

I can’t sleep.
Last night, everytime I lay down the room was spinning.  I was too scared to nod off in case I passed out.

We eventually got to sleep at 2 I think.  Poor Lance – he couldn’t sleep because I was crying so much.

I think it’s from all the drugs my body has got over the last week.  I don’t really want to take the anti-depressants.

Friday 16th…
When they did the apgar checks in the nursery they discovered that he could not breathe on his own at all. Connor was put onto the ventilators in NICU at 70% oxygen. He had a feeding tube in his nose, a drip on his hand and foot, and a line going through his bellybutton.
They wheeled me in to see him at about 8pm. It was so surreal.

Saturday…
He improved overnight, and by the end of Saterday he was down to 30% oxygen. He was breathing mostly on his own.
I really had my first wobbly that day. I went to see him during the day, and he started crying. Words cannot express how sad it is to see your baby crying and there is no sound. The feeding tube goes past his vocal cords and it stops his voice from working.
They started feeding him formula – 5ml’s. i decided not to breastfeed after the palava with Bradley.

Sunday…
There was NO improvement. Again, a very hard day.
OK, I lie. When we went to see him in the morning, he hadn’t passed meconium yet, so they gave him an enema and that worked! And they increased his food to 10mls, but were concerned about the amount of gastric discharge (basically he wasn’t absorbing enough).
Still on 30% oxygen, and we got told he’d probably be in NICU for up to 3 weeks.
I didn’t have a good evening. The fact that I was leaving my baby there was very hard for me to come to terms with.

Today…
I got discharged. The gynae has given me anti-depressants and she is concerned that I'm too “blue”. I haven’t taken them though. I think I’ll be ok. I have told Lance to watch me though LOL! Poor man!
Connor is doing OK today. He was put under the blue lights today as his bilirubin levels are a bit high, but that's no real surprise. The breathes per minute have been reduced to 13 (from 60 when he was born), so he is less reliant on the machine for breathing. His feeds are still 10ml's every 3 hours, but he’s absorbing them today. And…. he’s sucking his dummy!!! The first signs that he can suck. He knows our voices too – he calmed down immediately when I got there today – I started singing to him when he was crying. I can’t do much else really.
Bradley is back to “normal” today with me being at home. I feel so sorry for him.
We are going to spend our mornings with Connor while Bradley is at school, and then spend the afternoons with Bradley. I just wish Bradley could see Connor.

My mom had to pick Bradley up from school at tell him that his brother was about to be born. Lance was frantically trying to pack bags – poor man! He was on the phone every 5 minutes looking for another item on the list (thankfully I’d left it in the house!). He arrived at the hospital at 1pm.

I was due to have the caesar at 3pm, so we’d asked my mom to arrive with Bradley at 4pm. The plan was… according to hospital regulations, the siblings and grandparents can see the baby 10 minutes after birth. All very exciting… not that it worked out

We got wheeled into the theatre at about 3:20pm to have the spinal done. Boy, was I nervous!! I had such a BAD experience with Bradley’s caesar (I ended up with a scab the size of a R5 coin from the pin pricks to get the needle in). But, this time round, it was a fab experience. The anaethetist, Dr Garrett was amazing!! The needle went in first time!! I think a big part of it, was because he’d let Lance stay with me while they put the needle in.
I just concentrated hard on the music playing in the background.

I hadn’t even had time to choose a CD as was the plan. So Connor was born to radio 94.2 – the song – I wish I was a punkrocker!! Cool song to be born to!!

So, Connor James Verster was born 16 February 2007 at 15:48. He weighed 3kg exactly.
His apgar scores were 8/10 and 8/10. He is exactly 5 weeks prem. Even though he is a good weight, his lungs are not developed completely yet.

I got to hold him in theatre. And that’s the first and the last time I’ve done that so far.

He was taken straight to NICU, so Bradley hasn’t even seen him yet .

Wow, so much has happened in the last week!!  Going to start here….

Monday…
In the evening started getting contractions/BH  again, but now they were getting stronger and were 3/5/10 min apart but quite irregular.  So, I ignored Lance's pleas to phone the labour ward and eventually they went away.

Tuesday the 13th
By the time I'd walked the 15 min trek to my desk from my car at work, I started feeling really awful.  No BH's but I felt really washed out.  At about 10am I decided to phone the gynae and find out when I must actually go to the labour ward.  The sister told me to come immediately to the offices so I can be monitored.
The monitors showed that the BH's/contractions were really bad.  Connor was going ballistic in my tummy the whole morning, he just never stopped moving.  When Dr Loock did a scan, it showed that he had turned!!!  Even she was surprised, she thought she was going to deliver a breech baby.  She admitted me to the labour ward to monitor me, but really thought that the contractions would stop after a few hours.  She thought that the irritated uterus was due to him turning.
So, I rushed home to phone Lance, my mom, and pack my bag (not that I packed Connor's yet lol)
They put me on a ventolin drip (that's right – the stuff used for asthma, it apparently works on the same muscles as the uterus).  This started at 50ml/h.

Wednesday…
My uterus just continued being irritable.  Even though I could really feel them, the monitors picked up constant contractions.  They kept increasing the dosage of ventolin.

The stuff is AWFUL!!  It makes your heart go ballistic, and I was shaking so badly, especially when it was increased to 80ml's/h.

Thursday…
The gynae decided to start weaning me off the ventolin.  Ja right!!  As soon as it dropped to 60ml's, the contractions started getting constant again.  
By that afternoon, I started getting new pains though, like period pains after some of the contractions.  That worried them, as it meant that labour had possibly started.  I wasn't even 35 weeks pregnant yet!!  So, the gynae decided to reduce the drip, and try a pump too (the asthma pumps) – that did nothing and I got ready for bed (sleeping tabs) – after having an internal where the sister discovered that my cervix was softening so I was going to start dilating soon.  
The sister came in again, and said, Elna wanted me to have a pethidine jab (with the sleeping tab!!) and a half-hour drip of magnesium sulphate – my word, did I feel crap then!!  Then I went to sleep.

Friday the 16th (35 weeks pregnant) …
Well, basically nothing had worked.  
Dr Loock came to check on me at 11am.  Told me that if I stayed on the drip for much longer I would have heart failure.
I was told to get ready for my caesar at 3pm!!

Poor Lance, he had to pack the bags then!