Reflux

Thank you all first and foremost for reading our blog and praying for our little boy. Im truly understanding how awesomely blessed we have been that he has done so well more and more everyday. Asher is now 45 days old....WOW! He is 32 weeks adjusted (what he would have been in utero). He also weighs in at a whopping 3lbs 5oz. He is growing more and more everyday and changing so fast. About 3 days ago we were finally moved to a room with a window. Asher is being introduced to cyclical lighting now which means hes getting light during the day and dark at night instead of them keeping it dark ALL the time. We loved our new room, until yesterday. The new room is placed on the back hall in the back corner, which we thought was nice because of privacy but I realized very quickly that i dont really want privacy anymore. Asher had been getting his food through a small tube in his nose called a NG (nasogastric) that goes into his stomach. He was getting his food continuously, a little at a time throughout the day because he struggles with refluxing his food. The doctors thought since he is getting bigger that we should try to feed him his food every 3 hours for 2hours at a time and then allow him to rest for an hour. This supposedly gets them prepared for eating from a bottle because they cant really take 4 hours to suck down 5 ounces. Well, needless to say, the refluxing reared its ugly head big time!
See, when preemies (or anyone for that matter) reflux, the burning stomach acid creeps up their esophagus and sits there. Our bodies natural reaction, just like theirs is to protect their airway. But......we actually start breathing again when it goes down. Asher, on the other hand, he forgets to start breathing again. He had a pretty dramatic episode yesterday while his feeds were running where he must have refluxed and quit breathing in bed and then his alarms start dinging because his heart rate slows and his oxygen levels begin to drop. Well the scary part about our privacy was that no one heard his alarms going off. No one came. I was there alone trying to rub my baby as hard as i could to make him breath and it felt like forever before someone came to help. Finally i yelled down the hall and his nurse came running. By this time, his oxygen levels were at 24% when they need to be above 83%. YAH....SCARY! She got him to come back with just a little oxygen and a whap on the butt.
I brokedown after that. I cried so hard i could barely stand it but the doctor and nurse manager came in to apologize to me and reassure me that this wouldnt happen again. Good ending is that we now have a room in the middle of a busy hall with 2 windows!!!! Haha! We are VIP now. Oh, and he let them know he wasnt ready for 2 hours feeds yet so hes back to continuos and he has not had a scary spell since.
God's hand is really on Asher right now everyone. I hope to use his story as a huge testimony to others. If someone doesnt believe that prayers can actually work, they have not met my little boy!
Please continue to pray for Asher as he gets older. Please pray that God would protect his little body from any sickness or infections which would be the biggest step backwards right now. Please pray that he will eventually be able to eat without refluxing all the time. That he would continue to tolerate being weaned down on his nasal cannula, and that it would finally come off as I truly believe its just a nuisance to him right now. Please pray for his continued healing and that in another month or so that he could come home!
His nursery is all ready for him! Pictures to come soon!