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.