I continue to run each little bit of colostrum we manage to get up to baby throughout the night.

In the morning labs come back good with the exception of white blood cell count. We still don’t know why.

He has been on a general antibiotic since birth and will be till he is a week old. The xray on his lungs this morning were still good. They did a blood clotting test, his blood clots well but still  Scared about the potential lifelong issues that we will have due to the grade 4 IHV (Intraventricular hemorrhage). The damage is likely already done but we won’t know the severity till possibly years down the road.

We are waiting on another ultrasound today to see if it is holding even or getting even worse/ only on one side still

1204 The culture on the placenta came back with e-coli. Dr. Thinks that it may have caused the fever and early delivery. E-coli also on umbilical sample. E-coli is extremely, most people have it inside of them.

Sample taken from baby one hour after birth still negative for e-coli.

7 days of antibiotics scheduled,. They are worried infection may have spread to his brain causing menengitis. Potentially more brain issues. Discussion of checking spinal fluid to indicate if infection did get into brain. If positive for infection then we will do 21 days of additional antibiotics.

Still the only flag for potential issue that is causing high white blood cell count so far. They will be able to more directly target possible infection with antibiotics now.

1521. Ultrasound results are back.  His IHV is still as bad as it was, but not getting worse for now.

1700 Mom is discharged from hospital.

Swedish hospital has parent sleep rooms that are available to parents of children in the NICU,  it was made possible through donations what an amazing thing.  We can stay in the hospital for the next two days to be closer to RT! Tonight we will sleep on the 2nd floor,  RT will sleep on the 6th. The room is airconditioned quiet and dark,  exactly what we need. Between pumping every 3 hours and horrible stress dreams we are able to get some sleep. Each time we pump I bring the bounty up to RT.

At 0500 July 24th I sleepy eyed climb into the elevator  there is a few cheerful nurses that must have already had their coffee, they take note of the colostrum I have in a 6cc syringe. One says with great enthusiasm “you look absolutely thrilled to be delivering colostrum right now!” We all laugh.

I will try and consider today a partial Victory, potentially identifying an infection and his brain bleed not getting worse…