"All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope."
--Alexandre Dumas

Happy Birthday little one. Today our bb is a week old. An achievement that I'm sure would have gone unnoticed if he was born full term. A week for him marks a significantly lower risk for the major complications of being born this early. The most potentially damaging is an Intraventricular Hemorrhage (IVH) or bleeding in the brain. A severe IVH can lead to advanced mental and physical disabilities. He had an ultrasound of his brain today and passed with flying colors--not the slightest sign of bleeding.

He had what's called a picc-line put into his arm today. It's a catheter that they put in through a vein in his arm and up to the bigger veins near his heart. It enables the medical staff to give him higher concentrations of meds and fluids and avoids the necessity of constantly poking him with needles. They said he was pretty annoyed during the procedure, but settled right down again once it was done.

Tomorrow they are going to see how he does coming off the ventilator. They'll insert what's called a CPAP into his nose (if they can find tubes small enough--he has a very tiny nose) which forces just enough air to keep his lungs open in between breaths so he doesn't have to work quite as hard to breathe. We'll see how it goes. Even if he can only last a few minutes, it will be nice to actually see his face under that huge breathing tube. :)

He's still really stable though. As one of his doctors said today, "A boring day is a really good day." We LOVE boring days.