Jaden's NICU Stay

Jaden was born 4 weeks early and spent 21 days in the Intensive Care Nursery both at Truman Medical Center and Children's Mercy. He had pneumonia which caused his breathing to be tachypnic or faster than normal. He also had a little trouble with his blood sugar due to his birth mom having gestational diabetes. He was on CPAP machine to help him breathe at first. Then, he graduated to a nasal canela. Jaden was also born with a VSD, Ventricular Septum Defect, which keeps his breathing a little faster than normal. He has a hole in his heart that may need to be fixed with open heart surgery when he is about 6 months old. Jaden stayed in an isolette which Daddy and Mommy called an incubator for his first week while he was trying to learn to regulate his own body temperature. Here is his isolette at Truman-his home for his first few days.

The neonatalagist at Truman thought he may have had an endocrinology issue and suggested he be transferred to Children's Mercy when he was 9 days old. After further testing, he did not have that issue, but we were glad he was transferred as they take a more aggressive approach in treating preemies at Children's Mercy. He was on 10 days of antibiotics to treat his pneumonia and in that time, his lungs finished maturing and his breathing slowly improved. His antiobiotic was given through a midline IV in his head. While this looked pretty scary, the nurses explained to me that this is the best place for an IV for a newborn. It is less likely to come out, its their biggest vein and the nerve ending haven;t completed developed, so they don't feel the pain. Jaden did have to have a feeding tube almost his entire stay. His breaths per minute had to be below 70 in order to bottle feed. If you try to bottle feed while they are breathing too fast, newborns can aspirate. As the antibiotic worked its magic, he was able to take more and more feeds with the bottle and finally got rid of the feeding tube at Mommy's request when he was 16 days old. Two days later, he was able to get off the nasal canela. Each of these were steps toward coming home!