Jackson Five

Well Jackson is five days old. Today we were able to first see our sons eyes. He would respond to sound look at where the sound was coming from and then fall back asleep. He is squirming around and he is now sucking on his respiratory tube. It is so cute. We love our little Jackson.

I mentioned that I would go in to more detail on Jackson's removal from ECMO. Every morning the doctor and staff meet to discuss Jackson's progress. We went for the meeting in the morning and they were hoping to ween Jackson of the ECMO by that evening. This was a shock to us because we thought it wouldn't be until Saturday. Jackson has just been surprising all of the doctors and nurses.

It turned out we got a call in the afternoon saying that Jackson was scheduled to be taken off ECMO at 3:00 pm. We jumped in the car and found that the surgeons couldn't do it until 4:00 pm. They started the procedure and in less than 30 min they were done and Jackson was stable. I have a video that we will post that shows Jackson in his new state. He no longer has tubes going into his right neck.

As for this morning he has continued to be stable. He had to be put on dopamine for a small amount of time last night to help with his blood pressure; however, he is off of it now.  They have pulled out his catheter so that he is just using diapers now. Becca and I worked to change our very first diaper on our little Jackson, it was fun. he no longer has his pericardial drain or an iv in his right hand.

So where to from here? Well Jackson is still hooked up to a respirator. He is also on morphine and is quite used to his drugs. Jackson also hasn't eaten. He has been given all of his food and nutrients through iv. So the next steps will be to work on getting Jackson off of the respirator. I think that this will be the slowest process of them all. They are going to start feeding Jackson breast milk through a tube today and they are slowly weening him off his morphine.

All of your prayers have been felt and they are really helping our little boy. Keep them coming. Every day is another day closer.