11:00pm: The big news of today is that the sildenafil (viagra) has done a number on Reid. This afternoon, he had an erection for 3 hours (4 hrs is the cutoff time where they start to get concerned and have to call the urologist). And again, tonight when we called in around 11, he had another one. Maybe now that he is feeling better... he is REALLY feeling better? :)

Other news - he is 5.51 kg or 12.15 lbs. Comparing him to his last chart 2 weeks ago, he has made some really good gains on his length and weight. In fact, his height is now probably in the 45th percentile and weight in the 15th percentile (for a preemie born 3 months too early). Two weeks ago, he was around the 40th and 10th --- so maybe an increase in 5%? Hard to be exact when looking at the chart below:



12:30pm: Well, a little bit of news that we weren't expecting... they decided not to wean Reid's high flow today -- and in fact, it doesn't look like they are going to do any weaning for the next 4 weeks. The reason is that they want to get him off the hydrocortisone and the methadone before they start weaning any of the flow again. I think that it makes sense (to not push him too hard), but in our eyes, we see progress when we see lower numbers in his respiratory care. So, to know that we are going to be in a holding pattern on his flow for the next month, it is a little frustrating.

They have also changed his lasix (diuretic) to every other day instead of every day. His base excess was high today (+11), which can be caused by loss of electrolytes.

They want to talk to us about getting all of Reid's immunizations out of the way. We will find out details later.

Kristen and I are starting to feel a lot of pressure to be at the hospital for extended periods of time (pressure we put on ourselves). This was never the case when he was very small or very sick, but now that he is interacting with us, we feel the responsibility to be there for him and entertain him. The problem is, work gets in the way and the hospital is so far away from us (it is usually a 45 minute commute each way). We try our hardest to be there as much as we can --- and I guess that is going to have to be enough. We just wish we could spend every second with our little boy.

10:45am: A fairly uneventful night for Mr. Reid. He fell asleep at 8:30 last night and slept until 2am when he woke up crying. One of the side effects of the morphine/methadone weaning is sweating (and boy does this boy sweat)... and when this sweat cools off, he gets cold. In addition to the weaning of the methadone, the fact that he has chronic lung disease also causes some of this sweating (from work of breathing). He finally fell asleep, and then woke back up at 5am with the same problem. Poor guy!

His CO2 was 58.5 today and we are waiting on the doctors to make their rounds to see what else will be changed.