Off CPAP (hopefully for good!!!)

Just when I was beginning to think he was going to take that clunky machine to preschool....

Bennett has done fabulously the last few days with his respiratory issues. Yesterday, they discontinued his CPAP all together and he is now on nasal cannula full time. The cannula is on home-settings (100% O2 but only 1/8 liter flow - means he gets maybe 25% O2 max), and he is sating high 90s-100! I don't know what just "clicked" all of a sudden. His red blood cell count is rising, so they think maybe that is what is helping - giving him more energy to breath and having more cells to carry the oxygen!

His eating is sporadic. Some feedings he'll chug his whole bottle. Other feedings (particularly middle of the night), he refuses to take anything. I personally think this whole waking the baby up at exactly every 3 hours isn't working well for him, and that we need to go to a demand/4 hour schedule. I think he's just too darn sleepy to wake up and eat most of the time. If we wait for him to wake up hungry, we'll have more success. He can't go more than 4 hours obviously, and if he did go 4 hours, they'd have to add in a pro-rated amount of extra milk, but that is nothing. I asked his nurse practitioner about it and she said she'd discuss the idea with his doctor. For the most part, he is nursing like a champ.

So....the plan for now is to keep him on the "home setting" for his oxygen and give him some more time to get his act together with eating. Once he does that, then she is going to give a try at weaning him off the oxygen so that he doesn't have to come home with it. That would be SO wonderful. I have full faith and belief that he can do it!

We're now starting to speculate that maybe he can come home by the end of next week. I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!