I admit it's getting better

Such good news today: Jude is swallowing and off his oxygen tube. He's holding his vitals very well, and at noon, they let us feed him real food! He started small, since he's never eaten anything, but he ate so well. Amanda put the bottle in his mouth and he didn't really know what to do with it for about fifteen seconds. As soon as he got a little, he sucked down all 10 cc's and burped before she even had him upright to pat him on the back. It was awesome.

We're watching now to make sure his digestive tract is working, often when infants have trauma early on, all the blood goes to the vital organs - the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver, and the GI tract gets left behind. I haven't heard that he's had any trouble keeping it down, so that's good. They'll feed him 10 cc's at a time every 3 hours today, and if all goes well, he'll get increasing amounts of milk starting tomorrow. Also, they're actually going to let Amanda nurse tomorrow, barring any setbacks (she's been pumping and saving it at the NICU, and that's what he's eating today). All such great stuff.

More good news: His EKG from yesterday showed no signs of pulmonary hypertension. His EEG showed nothing major, but did show a little intermittent activity on the left side of his brain that could potentially put him at risk for seizures. They didn't seem too worried about that, and we'll just have to watch him to make sure we catch any potential seizure activity early. They've scheduled a brain MRI for tomorrow so that we can see what areas of his brain might be damaged.

Every day we've gotten better news and again, I can't describe how helpful everyone's support has been. Thank you sincerely.

We will go back and feed him again this evening, and we'll anxiously be awaiting his MRI results. We're definitely not out of the woods yet in terms of brain damage, but today's nurse said something today that struck me at the core in reference to his ability to be happy and healthy relatively soon: that Amanda and I might need to start thinking of Jude as "a regular baby, not a sick one." Exhale.