Fantastic Day for the little one!

Today when we arrived, Caleb already had his chest tube taken out. In its place was a gauze pad that was held in place by some tape--a new little belly button of sorts. And, as a surprise, the vent was set to CPAP. He was breathing on his own.

His spots had grown larger--the Benedryl had no effect on them. Later on in the day the dermatologists came down and pronounced that the spots were: who knows what. They couldn't figure out what the spots were. They finally decided it was probably a reaction to the antibiotics. Near the end of the day the spots had grown larger, but spread so big that they had started to fade.

After lunch, they gave me some great news... the vent was coming out! So goodbye vent, hello O2 thru the nose again! It's just a little support until his lungs get used to breathing on their own again. But, awesome job!

They put in a feeding tube and did give him a little milk by tube today, but this caused some issues. His chords in his neck are so swollen that he started to have issues breathing around the feeding tube. They noticed he was working really hard at breathing, and his O2 stats dropped--please note they only dropped to the upper 80s, not the 40s like before!! So they took out the feeding tube once more and did a little poking around to find that he did have a little need for suction.

If that didn't clear things up, they ordered some steroids to help calm things down in there.

So no feeding tube (sorry buddy) but they will try again when he is less swollen.

On his part, the baby is starting to look like himself again. He opened his eyes a few times today for a while and just looked around. I told him he just needed to rest after this big day and save his strength. He seemed to agree and slept most of the day.

He did wake up for the removal of a few of his pads--ooh he was angry. He tried to cry, but his chords are still hurting and swollen so it didn't come out much more than a lot of squeeking. He calmed down quickly. Although hiccups followed. I can't imagine that feels too well on his little chest!

But the doctors said he's not currently in pain--his heart rate and blood pressure are looking good, so they are keeping him on his current morphine levels so that his breathing doesn't become shallow.

So tonight the little one just needs to rest up, and tomorrow we'll have another day to try for the feeding tube. Good day, my sweet. :)