Remember He Hasn't Been Born Yet

It has been a pretty crazy week. Not my baby's guts just got a hole in them crazy, or my water broke at 19 weeks crazy, but definitely more crazy than our normal pre-baby life. Luckily, we had a lot of support from our family to help us through it. We had some good crazy and some not so good crazy this week, but I will start with the good crazy cause I was always the kind of girl who liked to eat her dessert first.

First and most important, Landon has now been fed for 9 days, which is 8 more days then we made it the last time we tried to feed him! He is fed through a tube in his nose and seems to really like it. He is still getting most of his nutrition through an IV, but should be ramped up to full feeds from breast milk by next week. Once we are at full feeds there is less of a chance that there will be a problem from the feeding...so we are still waiting for that day.

On top of being fed, Landon also got some special guy time when he was held by his daddy for the first time. It was an amazing moment to watch and made me so proud of my family. If that wasn't amazing enough, he had a special visit by Brady Hoke (University of Michigan Football coach), Jay Feely (Former U of M player, now Arizona Cardinals kicker), Larry Foote (Pittsburgh Steelers football player) and other football guys that I can't identify (I am sure Ryan will grimace at my lack of football knowledge when he reads this). Apparently, they come to visit the children and babies every once in awhile because they support the hospital. I am not sure if Landon understood the great honor he was getting, but Ryan definitely did! It was amazing how much those men admired what Landon had been through and how tough he was. Not even 2 months old and he is already networking with celebrities!

We were also lucky enough to have both my aunt and cousin in from Texas and Ryan's mom in from Seattle this week. I know I have mentioned this before, but I don't know how we would get through this without our family. Last Monday, my visiting aunt and cousin along with my mom and another aunt and cousin helped us to clear out Landon's room to prepare it to become a real baby room. Given that I suspect I may be a budding hoarder and I was using that room as a storage closet, this was no small feat. Once that was done, Ryan's mom and my mom were able to run around town gathering decorations to get his room complete. Hopefully, once it was all painted and totally set up I will be able to post some sweet pictures of the best baby room. I am sure it will be envied by babies everywhere. I don't know where they found the time, but both of our moms were able to make us a homemade dinner. It was amazing to come home from the hospital to a home cooked meal. (I am not going to lie though, I wasn't much of a cook before I got pregnant so having food made is a really special treat for both of us).

Now to the not so fun time this week, think of this part of the update as the peas you have to eat at dinner in order to get to dessert. No one really likes peas, but sometimes they are just a necessary evil. At the beginning of the week, Landon was doing so well his doctors decided to start weaning him off the ventilator in preparation to get him off of it completely. The first day of this went really well, propelling his medical team to start weaning even more aggressively. If we have learned anything over the past 6 weeks, it is that Landon has no problem letting us know when he doesn't like something. He REALLY didn't like the aggressive weans on the ventilator.

I mean if you look at it from his perspective, here he was not having to really try too hard to breathe and then all of a sudden we are pushing him to breathe more on his own. Plus, his tummy is open with intestines hanging out and now he has to digest food. It is no wonder he got mad. Unfortunately, he shows his anger by not breathing and making his heart rate and oxygen levels drop to the point that his medical team had to work on resuscitating him. This resulted in his ventilator support being turned up even farther than where they were before the team started weaning it. For some reason, this really upset me more than most of his other setbacks have. I don't know if it was because he just seemed so uncomfortable and there was nothing I could do to help him or if it was just hard to accept that we had to go backwards. I think in the back of my mind was the irrational fear that maybe he would never get off of the ventilator.

His doctor helped me when he pointed out that technically Landon hasn't actually been born yet. That puts so much perspective to the situation. This poor kid should be swimming in my tummy, but instead we are making him breathe and digest food and put up with needle sticks and eye exams and all other manners of uncomfortableness. He is an amazing boy to keep fighting. His nurses are always commenting on the fact that this boy is tough, and he had professional football players confirm this....so it must be true. This was even after Ryan broke the news to Brady Hoke that Landon would be playing hockey and not football when he grows up :). He used this toughness to rally and today was able to start weaning on the ventilator again. We pray that he continues to tolerate this and one day soon I will have the news that my baby can breathe on his own!