Day 22

This morning we arrived at the hospital and were so excited to see that Levi did great during the night. His settings were still down and his sats were still up. Shortly after, he started dropping his sats (not horribly, but enough that we had to go back up on his settings). The nurses are wonderful. They are very good about lowering the settings very slowly over time so that they don't push him too far. They are always talking about how our baby is just different from the other babies on ecmo. Because of the heart condition, they have to keep his PDA open and that makes his sats drop sometimes. There are days where they don't adjust the settings at all and his sats will stay up for awhile then go down for awhile and there usually isn't anything that will make them go back up. There is never one way to keep him happy, it is always something different. Thankfully, he keeps some of the same nurses and they know him pretty well and have learned how he reacts to things.
Anyway, when we got back from lunch his numbers were better so they were trying to adjust some of the settings back down slightly. We didn't make much progress with that and the rest of the night we have had to creep the settings slowly back up to where we started. This is pretty discouraging but I am trying to not be upset and just believe that when we get back in the morning, he will be doing better again. They started Levi on the steroids this morning thinking that would give him a boost after his good night and he will get them tomorrow and the next day so we are really needing/hoping for him to make progress over these next two days and for his lungs to open up. We have had some breath sounds on and off today end even some small ones in the left so let's pray tonight that his X-ray will show some air in there tomorrow. That will show the doctors a little progress which will give him more time to make more progress. You can do it, Levi! God is working on him every day!