NICU day 51

Last night I went to the Dixie Chicks concert with a couple friends. It was a much-needed girls’ night out, and I was too tired to write by the time I got home. But now it’s 4 am and I’m up for my nightly pumping session so figured I’d get a quick update out while I’m up. Because yesterday was actually a pretty big day… Emmett is off oxygen!

They decided to remove his cannula yesterday morning, despite the fact he’s still having desats from the reflux. Even when they periodically turned up his oxygen through the desats it didn’t seem to make any difference, so they thought they’d go ahead and give him a try. Worse case scenario they put it back. As you can see in the picture below, they left the pads taped to his cheeks in case they needed to put it back. But so far he’s doing great. No increase in desats — maybe possibly even a teeny improvement, if anything. Maybe he’s just more comfortable without something on his face and up his nose, and it’s possible he’s getting less air in his belly now. They warned us that if he were going to need it back, they would either know right away due to an increase in events, or they would know after a day or so on it because he would start showing signs of fatigue from doing too much on his own. Fingers crossed he continued to do well through the night when I call in the morning for an update!