It’s been kind of a rough day. Even just typing out “day 50” sends a new wave of exhaustion through my body. I’m so tired. Emmett seems to have very suddenly developed a case of severe reflux and it’s been causing us a lot of issues. It started yesterday evening with him spitting up a couple times (out of character for him), escalated to a fairly traumatic spit up/choking/brady/desat episode late last night, and now all day today he’s been having desat events and struggling to breathe at times because he’s refluxing up into his mouth and nose. They had recently increased his feeds (he’s up to 36 ML per feed now) and think that could be what’s causing the reflux, but he’s been on full feeds for several weeks now, so the increase shouldn’t make that big of a difference — they’re just pacing his growth. Either way they don’t want to back off on the feeds since growing is still our primary focus. They’ve talked about possibly lowering his caffeine since he seems to be growing out of the apnea, and caffeine can exacerbate reflux. In the meantime, they’ve raised the head of his bed so he’s at a bit of an incline, and for now we wait and see if he gets better or worse. I held him upright this evening during one of his feeds and that seemed to help some.
To add insult to injury, he had another eye exam this afternoon. The same horrible ROP check he had two weeks ago. Unfortunately, this time he is presenting with stage 1 ROP. As I mentioned before, it’s rated from 1-5, with 5 being the worst. The good news is, the ophthalmologist said 90% of babies grow out of stage 1. About 75% will progress to stage 2 first, but will still be among that 90% and grow out of it. IF it gets to stage 3, we start discussing treatment options, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.
On a positive note, he gained 62 grams tonight, bringing him to 4 lbs 3 oz.
Keeping up with the Hoffmans 