ROP? Nope.

You know I forgot to mention that Jordan’s due date was this past Saturday. Happy birthday son! We went back into the city today to visit the children’s clinic, right next to the children’s hospital. It was a good day. Jordan came home exactly 2 weeks ago. He left the hospital at 6 pounds 1 ounce. Yesterday he was 7 pounds 13 ounces. The mama Ali was convinced that he was constipated and had about half a pound of formula in him. He already showed us that he was in no way constipated. We also saw our NICU friend from Daytona. She gave birth about 3 days before us in the hospital we were in at the time. I’ve always compared my baby with hers even though she was about a week further along in gestation. My baby is bigger, but hers is off the oxygen.

We then got to visit the eye doctor. With ROP, the risk is that the blood vessels don’t grow all the way across the retina, leading to vision problems. According to the doctor, the vessels have grown all the way across the retina and he doesn’t technically have ROP anymore. However, the blood vessels are still a bit immature, so he wants to see us again in two weeks. With a little luck, that might be the last time for that doctor.

The best part was the pulmonolgist. That’s the doctor in charge of the oxygen and the apnea monitor (or as we call it, the damn monitor). What she does is start measuring the oxygen saturation in his blood and then turn off the oxygen. If he can go 30 minutes without desatting, we can then wean him off. He lasted 5 minutes. That means at least one more month of oxygen at the current level (about a quart per hour). However, there is good news on the monitor. We had 134 alarms over the last 2 weeks. I think one of them wasn’t a false alarm. The doctor said that going forward when Jordan is awake and we are paying attention to him, we can turn off the damn monitor. Now we just need him to wake up. He slept all day long except for about 15 minutes during the eye exam. He made up for it last night. Of course I don’t have to work tomorrow, so he’ll sleep plenty tonight.