More ups & downs

Daddy Log March 25 & 26
"On Tuesday Jonah graduated to the "big boy ventilator". His required pressure on the oscillator was down to 7 and Rebecca thought it was time to try the conventional unit again. It was a big step for Lez and me but Jonah handled the transfer very well. That evening at rounds Rebecca called Jonah the unit’s "golden boy" and Dr. Bad News said it was "quite a change" from Friday/Saturday. That night though our roller coaster took a violent turn downward.
When Minnie was changing his incubator, she noticed a discolouration of his abdomen. She measured it and it was up to 19 cm from 17 cm. They were worried that his bowels were distended and possibly perforated (which would require crash surgery). Fortunately, his saturation, heart-rate, and blood pressure still looked good.
In the morning, the neonatologist suggested that they transfer him to CHEO to have a fancy x-ray done where they put barium dye in his system and follow it though his bowels. We were stressed (Jeanette was too) but Jonah was just chillin’. He handled the transfer much better than Lez and I. The photo-op at the x-ray machine shows a slightly annoyed/stressed Dad."


Mummy note:
For the transfer, they put Jonah in a ziploc bag, up to his neck to help preserve his body heat. This was the first time we held Jonah.
Daddy Log Con't "...But they eventually got him (Jonah) to his new house and he settled in quickly. They started doing a series of x-rays that evening/night. The distention and discolouration looked worse but the surgeon had left and wouldn’t be in until morning to look at the results. Again, the parents were pretty stressed. I stayed with Jonah that night (where I started writing in this book) and slept for a few hours in the parent room. He had a very uneventful night. Everything looked perfect. They had already ruled out necrotism and had pretty much ruled out a twisting of the bowels (the worst possibility) so we were hoping for the best– that he was just a tad backed up and that the poops he had the morning of his transfer would have cleared the way."