Saturday AM

Little by little, every day Jonas is slowly making progress. Today his lungs are almost all clear from the fluid; he is on a little less blood pressure medication; his respiratory rate has slowed down significantly; little by little he is doing more breathing on his own and less help from the ventilator. He is receiving another phototherapy treatment this afternoon for jaundice, but he looked much less yellow in color today than yesterday. His lab tests are looking good overall.

He had a few ounces of pumped milk yesterday, but his abdomen got very distended so they had to stop all the feedings again. They are saying his body is just too weak to focus on digesting anything right now and he is working hard just to fight this infection and that's all he can handle now. He's getting very skinny and losing weight -- we are thankful that he started out over 8 pounds so that he has some weight he can lose and still be okay.

We got a culture result showing that he has E. Coli from his rectal swab, meaning somehow in his first few hours or during delivery he was colonized with E. Coli in his GI tract. From what I understand this could be a possiblity as to how he became septic. I'm trying not to do too much research online because it just makes me fearful and sad about all the "what-if's". But there is a huge what-if that we are praying he does not have....along with sepsis, sometimes babies can get meningitis from the same organism (and the work-up is usually done together, checking for both of them). Meningitis is an infection in the cerebro-spinal fluid in the spine and surrounding the brain. He's not showing any significant signs of meningitis, but he signs are very vague or subtle so it's not likely that we would see anything either way. He will need a spinal tap to tell if there's bacteria in this fluid; but right now he's too unstable...they are saying once he is able to come off the ventilator he will have the spinal tap. We are praying that this test would not show bacteria and that he would have no long-term effects!!

We are thankful that progress is being made; but at the same time we are both a little sad today because it feels like things are going so slow. They keep reminding us that we just have to be patient, but it's so hard to see your little one day after day fighting such a big infection and being so weak. Pray also for us that we would continue to trust Jonas into the Father's hands and have peace in our hearts and minds.