I didn’t really blog about our NICU experience while it was going on, so I’m going to try to get it all down now.

On Monday morning the nurses took Daniel to the nursery for some tests. There, they found that he was having a hard time keeping his oxygen saturation levels up. This can be indicative of an underlying heart condition, and this caused additional concern because roughly 50% of children born with Down syndrome have congenital heart defects. Fortunately, there is a pediatric cardiologist in town so he was called in to do an echocardiogram. It was done Monday afternoon and they found that his heart is normally formed, no defects, which is really great news. In addition, they did an x-ray and found no problems with his lungs- also good news. However, he still couldn’t keep his oxygen sats up, so they had to keep him in the NICU.

They discharged me Monday afternoon. My doctor offered to wait and discharge me Tuesday, but since our house is so close to the hospital, I figured it be better to go home where I could get more rest. Anyway, Tuesday mostly involved watching Daniel’s oxygen levels, hoping they could wean him down to a reasonable amount to go home on. The oxygen was the big thing, but Wednesday afternoon he ended up under phototherapy lights for jaundice. Phototherapy lights mean being undressed, and by Thursday morning he was in an isolette because he couldn’t keep his body temperature up on his own.