Leaps and Bounds -- Extubate today!

We didn't get a chance to post something yesterday. A few developments:

• Lucas continues to improve with his breathing rate and tolerates all this slow weans off the ventilator
• He's more comfortable in general, but his bilirubin counts have plateaued around 14 (direct/conjugated counts) -- Dr. Chris seems to think this may be a clue to some infections in his GI area (his heart was so severely dysfunctional that it is causing a back up in his liver -- it's quite large -- and want to do a consult with the GI specialists.
  
• He's tolerating his feeding regime (they have moved him to continuous feeds rather than every 3 hours to hepl him tolerate all the calories he's getting at one time. He was gagging after they packed the breastmilk with so much fortification but seems to be better -- they want him to grow, but not to give him too much fluids since he was retaining water so much
• He's being weaned off the morphine at a rate of 20% every other day.
• He's got two more days of antibiotics to go

A few other things to note: I was able to hold him for over 1.5 hours yesterday without any complaints from him. Yea! He was definitely interested in his surroundings and me and was up for a little while, then fell asleep in my arms. It was very worth the cramped arms and back. I also gave him a sponge bath last night. He wasn't too thrilled, like getting his diper changed, but I think that's only normal. He's such the sweetie.

So the BIG news this morning when my husband and I arrived to the hospital -- oh yeah -- our room here at the hospital was reprioritized for other more critical patient's parents from out of town. We gladly gave up our room for those who really needed it, so we're now traveling across town at least once if not twice a day -- the doctors have weaned Lucas down on the ventilator so much that they are ready to extubate him ! Yes! Today! As in early this afternoon! We are hopeful it'll go well. We will definitly keep you all updated as we learn more. For now, Lucas is sleeping well. His big sister is here to play in the playroom, and I'm going to spend some time with her now.

Stay tuned...

UPDATE (2:30 PM)
At 1:15 pm today, the respitory therapist pulled the tube from Lucas. It went smoothly, and he's now on a high flow nasal cannula at 4 liter setting. We'll leave him on this for a little bit and slowly wean him down, but so far he's doing well! As nurse Kirsten says, he's a Rock Star!

We can finally see his face, and his cries are hoarse, but he's slowly gaining his voice. Here are a few pictures of him:



A close up:



Looking curiously at his surroundings, daddy included:



And looking at daddy, eye to eye contact:



Yea! We're super excited, and now we try to comfort him as best we can while he heals more and we figure out his high bilirubin counts. As I mentioned earlier, they will be doing a consult with the GI specialists for his cholestasis etiology (big liver they see in his doppler scan). For now, we celebrate!