DEECON'S FIRST BOTTLE

As we advance into the New Year, Deecon's lung streaking has subsided. The Lasix seems to have worked in drying out his lungs. The doctors have explained that the accumilation of fluid on his lungs are due to Deecon having Chronic Lung Disease. The excessive ventilation that Deecon required from birth has caused scar tissue damage his lung tissue. In turn Deecon will need time for his lung tissue to regrow and heal. In the meantime the doctors have prepared me that he will be highly supseptible to catching colds and may be ill a lot while being an infant. His days just keep getting better as the new year advances. We are able to slowly decrease his oxygen requirement :) On Jan 4th Deecon tried his first bottle, and he slowly drand the full bottle.. What a big boy :) I was so proud of my little man. It is a lot of work for Deecon to finish a bottle, with his lung issues he needs to pace himself and breath a lot through the feeding process. We are still breastfeeding as well. Throughout the holidays Deecon's eye surgeon has been keeping a close eye on him so that his ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity) would not advance any further. To recap Deecon's eyes have progressed from no ROP to a stage 2, and now into stage 2 little 3. Stage 3 moderate is the level thatrequires eye surgery. My conversations with the eye surgeons have been so different as he has been checked every three days for progression. From the beginning the surgeons were deciding who would be doing Deecon's surgery since they thought it was imminent that he would require it due to his low birth weight and his high oxygen requirement at birth. But Deecon has shocked everyone and as the time goes on he is slowly regressing. His eyes this last check have got a little better, which again has cancelled our tentative surgery date. Each check-up comes with a tentative date, and each time Deecon beats it. It sure keeps my nerves at attention but I couldn't be Happier :) I would literally do anything for Deecon so that he wouldn't have to go through another surgery. Absolutely anything!! I asked all the questions that I had to the surgeon was devastated with some of the answers. Eye surgery is 1 hour and a half, which I thought would be much shorter. The baby needs to be re-intabated and on a ventilator, back in an incubator and moved back to the NICU. This surgery would send us back a month. So keep the prayers coming that Deecon can and will beat this eye disease. He is definatly moving in the right direction.

DEECON'S FIRST CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS

Christmas was really hard for us. We stayed in London with Deecon as long as we could on Christmas Eve, but had to return home for the girls and for family celebrations. I found it difficult to celebrate because he wasn't in my arms to celebrate with us. During the Christmas holidays the girls each got to spend some quality time with thier baby brother. They each got to hold him like a real baby as well as help bath and change him. Deecon had a very Merry Christmas but Boxing day was a bit rough for him. He started it off with a big Brady, dropping his heart rate which required major stimulation and oxygen. They found that it may be due mostly to his problem with acid reflux. Deecon has been on his two medications for reflux, renenidine and maxerant for sometime now so they decided to increase it to help keep his stomach at rest to lessen his bradycardia moments. They also decided to raise his oxygen to 125%. His weight is increasing at a great rate, he is the big 4pounds 14oz. He changes so much each day. :) As 2008 ended we were able to weign Deecon's oxygen down to 110%. By the new year Deecon's weight reached 5 pounds :) But the New Year was not as kind to him as we would've liked. Deecon had another Bradycardia, requiring stimulation but this time he needed additional assitance called sipap. This is a oxygen mask that they place over his whole nose and mouth area to pump maximum oxygen in him. He recovered niclely but with two Brady's so close together the doctors decided to have a chest xray done. The xray showed that Deecon has some streaking on his lungs which is causing him his problems. The doctors were not sure if the streaking was showing the early sings on pneumonia or if it was just fluid accumilating on his lungs so they decided they would try another shot of medicine called Lasix which hopefully will help eliminate his fluid on his lungs, in turn allow us to lower his oxygen requirements. With Lasix we have to keep track of his urine output and so far so good :) He had another CAH blood test done as well and we should have the results in a few weeks. Even though he has had two positive results I still don't think Deecon has this disease all I need is the result to proove it ;)