Ryker's Pictures

It has been a few days since I posted updates for Ryker :)
Things are going very well here at home. We are managing the oxygen and apnea monitor very well. We usually have the monitor go off at least once a night which scares us to pieces. Often he has just pulled the leads off.
He is eating well and sleeping pretty good for a newborn. We have fussy time every night for about 3 hours but it is expected and we get through it ok.
The girls are loving him to pieces and are very  "helpful". We have to remind Kenzie that he doesn't need his binkie every time he makes a sound.
I still need to post some pics of her holding him and will get some of Jayce this weekend while he is here.
I did get around to taking his pictures this morning. It took a while. We had to stop and put the oxygen back on once in a while. I found it more productive to just take a bunch while he was sleeping. :)

Here are a few of my favorites and the rest can be found on my photo website: http://www.onlinepictureproof.com/livingstonphotos/albums/portraits/52955

Home at last

Hi. I am Ryker.

Today I finally got to come home! I spent 16 longs days in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. I was born with pneumonia in my lungs. I didn't feel good for a long time but I am doing lots better each day.

Today my mom saw me being cute so she took a picture. She takes lots of pictures.....

This is me in my car seat ready to go home

I had to come home with some oxygen to help me breathe but I will try hard each day to get better so I don't need it anymore.

I have just met my big sister Haylee for the first time. She will be so much fun to play with when I get older.

I am looking forward to meeting my other big sister Kenzie and my big brother Jayce later today. And of course my grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles will all eventually come say hi.
I have to remember that I am still small though and that I can't get too excited or my mom will make me have a nap. I hope that when I get bigger and healthier and can meet more friends that I know have been thinking about me lots.

Thanks everyone for loving me so much already.

Love Ryker

Going home

We made it!!!  Ryker is going home tomorrow.
Unfortunately because I last posted about him being off oxygen someone didn't knock on wood. He is coming home on oxygen for a while. He failed the car seat test without it and de-saturates when he eats. But I am okay with that. My baby gets to come home.

We are staying tonight rooming in at the hospital where we have the night to make sure we can handle the monitors and feedings and everything before they discharge him in the morning.

So much thanks goes out to everyone for their love and faith and prayers to get our little guy well and home. We love each and every one of you.

Pictures to come when we get settled in at home.

2 weeks!!!

I haven't had a chance to post since my last update but I want to let everyone know that things are looking so much better. On my bad day Dustin was able to come up and give Ryker another blessing. The next morning we saw progress begin to happen again. Feedings started to go better, we decided to try turning down his oxygen too to see if he could hold his own. As of this morning he is officially off the oxygen!! We were expecting him to be on it for 2-3 weeks. Miracles do happen. 

Today is Saturday and Ryker is officially 2 weeks old. This morning we were able to progress on the feedings to an on-demand schedule. For 12 hours we let him wake up and eat whenever he wanted to. As long as he ate so much each feeding we would continue. He did so awesome! He took all his feedings without me even having to push him. Now he will rest for 12 hours and just get his feeding via feeding tube.
Tomorrow we will go for 24 hours on-demand. If he does well they will discharge him. Cross our fingers and knock on wood we might have him home Monday or Tuesday.

This is the only picture I got today. I took that outfit up to wear and he peed on it first thing...  little bugger.

Here are some other pics we haven't posted yet.

This was a cute outfit they put on him. Notice he peed on this one too.....

Grandma Steck getting to hold him for the 1st time.

Grandpa holding Ryker. (bad picture from video camera. I left my other camera outside)

When they say days they really mean weeks.

The title pretty much covers it.   I thought we were making lots of progress. When the pediatrician told me this morning to plan on another week I broke down. I don't know how I can keep doing this. I haven't seen and won't see my girls for days. Kenzie thinks I am making Ryker up. Haylee just knows that she misses me. I miss them like crazy. I am not sure what day it is most days.
In these moments I need the strength of all your prayers as well as the ones I know are being said for Ryker. I try not to have doubts. I know this is a trial i must face and learn and grow from. I will try not to ever begrudge anybody a healthy baby, and I will have complete empathy for anyone who has to face similar trials to what we have been through with 3 babies in the NICU. One day is one day too many. Weeks and months are an eternity.
I am sorry for the down in the dumps post. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Its Monday.

Well we have officially been in the NICU for 9 days and still counting. I wish there was lots of progress but there hasn't been. These are the days that get hard. Our pediatrician did come in this morning and take over care of Ryker. That means he kind of calls the shots now until Ryker is dicharged. We talked about his respiratory rate being too high still and needing to get the feedings going which will still take several days. As far as oxygen we are pretty much planning on taking him home on it and he could be on it for several weeks. Something about this altitude and the pneumonia making it hard for him to breathe. I think they still want to see the actual oxygen levels down too but one day at a time right?
So we'll continue to hope for the best and watch and wait. I think I am starting to learn about this patience thing.... then again maybe not. :)

1 week old

Today Ryker is 1 week old!! It has been a REALLY long week. But I happy to be able to report all very good news today. Friday morning they took him off the ventilator. They told me that if he was able to hold his stats then we would move on to the next steps. He did pretty good all day but towards the evening he couldn't keep his respiratory rate down. They were looking at putting him on the C-pap machine to help him along. Of course this was the last thing I wanted to so I talked to him and got the idea to sing to him since I always have music on and because he has been to primary every week since the beginning. So I sang him my favorite songs and he calmed right down. They still wouldn't let me hold him since he was going up and down so much. So I just sat by his side until it was time to go get some sleep. I worried all night that I would come back to find him on the machine this morning.

To my surprise he held his own all night and was still doing pretty good this morning. He is still up and down a lot but after the nurse did rounds she made lots of great decisions. I finally got to hold my baby!!!!  We even tried his first feeding. He did ok. We will try again later. Dustin even got to hold him for a while too.

Then we graduated him to a big boy bed. They discontinued all his IVs so now he just had the oxygen up his nose, the feeding tube, and the 3 monitors that he will keep on until we leave. It was a huge step in the right direction. We put some clothes on him since the open beds aren't temperature controlled and he didn't like it so much....

There is still a ways to go with getting him to eat, and getting the oxygen weaned down but this has been a day full of positives so far. We are so grateful for the progress. We are thankful for the many many prayers that have been said on our behalf.

Friday morning update.

Sorry it has been a little while since we updated. Hard to find time between the trips back and forth, spending time up there, time here with the girls, and everything else.

I haven't called this morning yet for an update so I will just try to catch up from the last post on Wednesday. That night he decided to extubate his ventilator tube. He coughed so hard and used his tongue to pull the tube out of his lungs. NOT a good idea buddy. They had to give him morphine and put him under to get the tube back in. Kind of a big step backwards because then they had to turn all the oxygen and pressure dials back up....   When I checked in with the nurse on Thursday they had been keep some meds going in him to make him stay relaxed and in my opinion "out of it" so that he didn't mess with the tubes again. I asked them to not give him another dose until I got up there to watch him when he woke up. We got there about 4:00 just as he was waking up for a diaper change and tube feeding. He opened his eyes and looked around and was very calm and alert while I talked to him. In my opinion again, he does a little better when they aren't giving him so many meds...  

As we sat with him last night they were able to start turning down the levels again. When we left last night the oxygen was all the way down to 20% which is as low as this machine goes. The pressure levels (which keep his lungs inflated while they are full of mucus ) had gone from 15 to 12 and they were hoping to get him down to 10 by morning. Once it gets to 8 and he holds there, they will attempt to take him off the machine. So today may hold some nice changes for us. We will cross our fingers and keep praying.

Back to update on some other things that I have been being questioned on, during the first day or so we discovered that there was a little tear in his lungs called a pneumothorax. Some air escaped from his lungs and was collecting outside his lungs keeping the lung compressed. They were able to pull that air out of the chest cavity and tear sealed itself off and is no longer leaking.

 Chest x rays have been showing small improvements. The tops of his lungs are mostly clear now and the bottoms are still kind of mucus-y but starting to clear.  Again we hope to see more improvements there.

We did give him a 'spit' bath last night. He didn't like it at all. The only time he calmed down was when I was scrubbing his head. but then when I dried it he got mad again. What a little spitfire.

No recent pictures but I promise to take more today.

Thanks for all the phone calls and comments and love sent our way. This has been really tough but I am looking forward to finally being able to hold this baby soon.

Wednesday

Not too much improvement today but this happens. They seem to plateau for a while then pick up and progress really fast when they are ready. So I am trying to be patient. We don't want to push him too fast and then relapse and have to stay longer.

Today he did seem more aware and awake. He finally opened his eyes so that is our picture for the day as well as one from last night where he got to try out a new position for a while. He seemed to enjoy it.

Tuesday

Today brought a few changes but not many. He did wake up a couple of times and he got really mad because he was being disturbed (diaper change, xray etc.). His hands go immediately to the tubes in his mouth and he tries to pull them out. They had to put him back under the first time, and the second time I got him to calm down without them having to medicate him. It isn't good for him to get upset because crying will only make his lungs worse.

The x-rays are showing some clearing. This is day 3 of the antibiotics and they say he may start showing more improvements from here on out. We will pray that is the case.

They have him wrapped up in a blanket now to keep his hands contained so he doesn't pull out the stuff. So of course any change deserves a picture!!

Last night we took the girls up to the Primary Pumpkin Patch to pick out their pumpkins. They are sure excited to carve them.

No change

Nothing to report....   no changes.  He is still on the ventilator with hazy lungs. They are treating him for the congenital pneumonia which means he is there for a week at the least. I am home and 'resting' ;-)

Thanks for all the help from everyone.

The picture isn't great. Just my phone's camera this time.

Some more pics

Here i am again....

things continue to unfold.  The latest is that he is back on the respirator (oscillater?)  with a tube into his lungs. Xrays are showing a continued fluid presence in there that is hampering his ability to be able to breathe on his own. We have learned now that although they did initially treat him for pre-mature lungs it might not necessarily be the case. Which honestly makes me feel a little less guilty that I wasn't able to carry him any longer. I could have gone another week and he might still have had sometrouble. We just never know. They are now treating him for viral/bacterial infection. They are doing a blood culture which won't have results until Tuesday or Wednesday. Once that comes back we will know more. until then they will continue to try to get the fluid out (think more mucus-like you have a cold fluid)  and hope that he gets better without more antibiotics. If the culture shows infection then it is a week of antibiotics.....

Thanks to everyone who have been helping out on the home front with the girls. I couldn't do it without ya.

I can't wait to come home and see you girls tomorrow!!  Love ya.

Here are some more pictures.

Update 2

Not much change this morning with the baby. I was finally able to get some sleep last night and feel a little better today.
Ryker is off the ventilator but back on the C-pap machine still needing assistance with his breathing. I get conflicting reports depending on who I talk to which is frustrating. IF he can start breathing better on his own he can be released. But reports are not looking favorable to that happening today.  We might be able to start some feedings later today. Again, everything is on a wait and see...

So hard.

the girls are having fun with grandma. we'll get them back home tonight so that Haylee can get to school tomorrow. Not sure what else will be happening. I should be released by noon tomorrow.  

Thanks for all the prayers on Ryker's behalf. Please keep them coming today. My arms are aching to hold my baby soon.

Winners

By the way the winners of the Guess When contest were:

Hailee I.

and my mom

on the date

and my brother Kelan was only off by one ounce on the weight.

Hailee I will catch up with you soon to deliver your prize.

Kelan you might have to wait for a while  :)

Thanks everyone who played. Sorry I couldn't accomodate all of you!!

Update 1

For now Ryker has been admitted to the NICU for further treatment. He isn't breathing well on his own.We are still hopeful for some fast progress but are trying to stay realistic too. We have been here before. He just didn't want to be left out of the fun his sisters both had as NICU patients.

Blood cultures will show us whether we have to start antibiotics or not. Best case scenario is that he will be able to transfer to the well baby nursery by tomorrow night and worst case is that he could be here for up to a week.

We ask for your prayers on his behalf...... and mine.

More pictures later or maybe tommorrow.

He's here!!!!!!!!

well everyone I made it one day longer than ever before!  36 weeks and 1 day.

Ryker Dustin Livingston was born this morning at 10:50 am. He weighed in at 6 lbs. 8 oz and 18 inches long.

I am doing ok. It was kind of a long labor compared to the girls. They had to use the pitocen to get me going in the end so the active labor was only 1.5 hours. Not too bad. 2 contractions worth of pushing and he was here. He came out squawking to the best of his ability.  He has a lot of fluid in his lungs so they did end up taking him to the NICU.They will observe him for a few hours and hopefully he can join me later today.

Heres some pics. They're not very cute. We'll try to get some better ones later. Thanks for all the love and support along the way.. It was a long journey but we are glad to have had things go as well as they have.

 

Guess when Ryker will get here!

Ok. I have been wanting to do something like this and my cousin inspired me to get it done...

I am having a contest to see who can guess the day my little guy will get here. The person who is closest will win a fun prize!!!

Here are a few hints to help you out.

My official due date is November 6.
Sunday Oct. 4th I will be 35 weeks.
I had my girls at 34 and 36 weeks.

Leave a comment with your guess and good luck!!


Want another chance to win?
Guess his birth weight for your chance at another prize!!