Learning to Breathe

So since Thursday, the picture that is here is the vision we have seen of our son. When you first look at the picture I think many of us are immediately pulled to the orange feeding tube or the tape holding the respirator in place so he could breathe. For me however I am always pulled to his eyes and hair. His eyes always seem to have an intensity to them, like he almost knows what is going on around him and is determined to beat everything he is going to come up against. Even when he was way drugged up he would open his eyes every once in a while and in between glazed over looks you would see that same fierceness. His eyes and the way his body has reacted has been continually giving us hope along with all of your prayers. The other part of David which freaked some people out the first time they saw him post-chest closure was his chest tubes which stuck out of his sternum carrying fluids away.

Today we had some very dear loving friends, Nathan, Cory, and Peggy and the boys drive from Nashville and Memphis to come and see us and meet David. David was going back into nap mode so we went and grabbed a quick lunch downstairs (btw after David leaves here I'm never eating McDonald's again) and by the time we came back up David's chest tubes were out and he was doing amazing. The next step was too eventually get his respirator out. We thought it was going to happen after shift change but about and hour and a half before that was too happen one of the doctor's comes in and fifteen minutes later David looks more like this:


That's right no tube!!!! We are so excited and pumped up about how good he is doing. That doctor came back in and checked to make sure his lungs were still doing good b/c he had been on the vent for a while and while he was leaving he said and I quote, "I love that kid, he couldn't have done any better!" Of course whole heartily agree with that but what is so amazing is that since he has gone off the machine almost all of his numbers have gone to be better than what they were while they were on the machine. The only number that has messed up a little bit is his CO2 and it is steadily working it's way down. He even came off his blood pressure medicine and his number has stayed the same! The kid is a rock star!

The best part of the day getting to hold him!


Yeah that's still our favorite thing to do, we can just sit and hold him all day long. The fun part is watching him start to show a little personality. He does not like the nurses very much right now. He seems to sense when they are coming and gets fussy pretty quick. He loves to hold onto fingers and have his little head rubbed. The hard part is we have to watch him pretty close because it is good for him to cry, good for his lungs to get going to help him relearn to breathe and get strength but if he bears down to hard he shuts off part of his heart and turns purple so we have to raise his legs up to his chest to release the pressure and he comes back to normal. Still it's amazing how much love, concern, and yet not panic we have when we cries. Right now he doesn't have the full force of his lungs and voice so it sounds like wheeze but he is slowly getting it back. We will soon start trying to bottle and breast feed as he can and they are starting to ween him off his meds to take him down to the NICU to gain weight before we can go home. It could be very soon, it could be a couple of months from now.

The amazing thing to me is how quickly he went from the vent to the himself, it goes back to that look in his eyes. Maye my laziness skipped a generation but he has this sense that he is going to do whatever he has to do. Our hearts have just been warmed by how amazing he has been. Also on a fun note his little chin moves his lips pretty good so I have been giving him lots of voices and accents all night long. It has been a long 10 days but we finally got to laugh and hold our child like we have dreamed about since we've been married. So overall it's was a great day. LOVE ALL OF YOU!!!

-D