Recovery from last nights events

I slept for about 2 hours in a chair by his bed - it is now 5:45 am.

The first time they rechecked Jac's blood gases around 2:00 am his sodium bicarbonate level was low and his pH was still low. The NP explained to me that this was in response his respiratory distress from last night.

When he is in respiratory distress his kidneys will hold onto sodium bicarbonate in an effort to buffer the his lowered pH due to a rise in the CO2 levels and decrease in the oxygen levels in his blood. When the distress has passed he no longer needed the extra sodium bicarbonate his body dumped it out into his urine - and dumped too much so we needed to help him recover from that overcompensation.

At 2:30 am they gave him a dose of sodium bicarbonate which ran for 30 minutes into his PICC line. Then at 5:22 am they retested his blood gases and they are all in a normal range including his pH and sodium bicarbonate level. This means that for the most part he has recovered from his respiratory distress (at least from a medical standpoint).

At 5:30 am they were drawing a lot more blood to test a bunch of different things including his electrolyte levels, triglyceride levels and his phosphorous level. These labs will take a few hours to come back.

To get his blood they prick his heel and basically milk his foot and leg. I finally had to stop watching after 20 minutes of this. Fortunately Jac did not seem to mind to much - his heart rate stayed right around 140 - 145 and he seemed to sleep through it for the most part. I think it helped that the top half of him was swaddled. One of the nurses and I discovered that he does much better with cares and procedure when the part of him that is not being messed with remains swaddled.

Jac continues to tolerate his 1 ml every 3 hours milk - when the nurses check for milk in his tummy each time before they feed him again they don't find any. Amazingly he continued to tolerate the milk all the way through last night even with everything that happened.

Jac is now sleeping. His next cares are at 8 am so Jac and I are going to try to sleep until then - but shift change is at 7 am and it gets louds in here when that happens - hopefully Jac will be able to sleep through it - he has a much better chance in his double walled isolette than I do in my chair!