Oxygen

Tuesday and Wednesday were somewhat rough days for the new Leacock family of three. We are learning a lot about pulmonary blood pressure and "blood gas" tests. The summary of the past 2 days is something like this:

Pulmonary blood pressure refers to the blood pressure of the arteries that take the blood from the heart to the lungs to get oxygen. Before a baby is born, this pressure is very high, because the lungs don't have any oxygen - all the oxygen is provided by mom. When baby begins to breathe air, this pressure is supposed to decrease and allow the blood to flow freely to the lungs. Weston seems NOT to want to do this - his pulmonary blood pressure remains high, so it's hard for him to get enough oxygen into the blood. Weston's breathing machine provides him with air that is enriched in oxygen so that he can get enough oxygen into his blood. As his blood oxygen levels remain good, they attempt to wean him to a lower level but have the oxygen in his blood remain high. For a couple of days, they have been trying to lower this level, but often he gets to a certain point and does a Lee Corso imitation, "Not so fast my friend!" (This likely indicates that he will go to FSU and also love football.) His blood oxygen begins to fall and this puts him at risk for increasing his pulmonary blood pressure even more. The doctor describes this as trying to return to the womb, where things were easy and he felt quite nice. The result is that they have to go back to the higher oxygen level and begin to wean him off of it again.

As of Thursday morning, Weston is breathing 65% oxygen (the air the rest of us breathe is about 21%). The chest tubes seem to have stopped draining air and we are hopeful that this means that the small leaks in his lungs have closed. We hope to report soon that these tubes will be removed.