Day 11 - Get that CPAP Off of Me!

Jonah never really liked the CPAP, I'm told few newborns do. Jonah ended up disliking it so much and giving his night nurse so much trouble that she decided to try him on a high-flow nasal cannula. Jonah satted all right, his oxygen saturation stayed where they needed it to be so they left it there and we never needed the CPAP again, yea!!! A high flow nasal cannula works pretty much like a regular nasal cannula with the exception that it can deliver a higher flow of oxygen because the air is heated/humidified so it doesn't dry out the baby's lungs. The high-flow nasal cannula looked much nicer because it allows you to really see the baby's face so at this point that we started taking a ton of photos.



We also started to get to really feed Jonah at this point! I had been pumping the entire time, waiting for him to get strong enough to eat. We had to start out very small, offering 5mL (1/6 of one ounce) and often he wouldn't take all of it. He had the triple whammy of the CDH making him tired out and his lungs work too hard and being premature so not having ever really mastered the suck-swallow-breathe coordination plus now he hadn't eaten since he was born which makes it hard on babies to learn to eat. The NICU nurses were better at it than we were to begin with, so I took to letting them feed him more than I did, he seemed to get in my lap and snuggle up for a nap rather than eating. But we were on our way, yet one more step in the right direction!