Jaime update

The baby house directors went to see Jaime in the hospital yesterday (Monday) and he's looking a little worse to when I saw him Saturday.  They have now put a feeding tube in his mouth to give him food directly into his belly.  He's not taking any bottles cause he's too tired.  They did do a blood transfusion but he's not much better.  He doesn't have a nasal cannula for oxygen yet though.  They said he was working a bit to breathe still.  They lost his IV again and so have just opted for oral antibiotics.  Even the nurse said he has gone really down hill from when he entered the hospital.  He was at 1.56 kg (almost 3.5 lbs) and still in the incubator on Saturday when I saw him.  Please pray for this little guy, the medical team taking care of him, and his father! 

 

I'm still having internet problems so I can't update as often or get those pics up yet, but I'm praying soon so you can meet our two newest members of the bercario (nursery) as well as see where Jaime is hanging out for the time being!

prayers for Jaime

I've been out of contact lately only because we made some changes on the base to our internet system and my computer is rebelling against it.  So i'm officially offline at the moment.  I'm praying someone can help me get it back online but for now this is the first time i've been online since Tuesday early morning.  Anyway, on to Jaime.

He had been doing great great!  Gaining weight and eating everything by bottle and he even got his IV out and was only taking oral antibiotics, but sometime between Thursday and today (Saturday) he took a little turn for the worse.  He has a really low blood count (hematocrit) at the moment and so it is causing him to have trouble breathing.  It's bad enough that they drew blood this morning with the possibility of giving him a transfusion.  This creates an even bigger problem over here because of the greater risk it poses to contract other diseases through inadequately scanned blood.  I'm praying that God does a miracle and he won't need the blood or for a really safe and quick administration of the blood as he wasn't looking to happy today.  They didn't have him on oxygen yet though, so they still have another step if they need it.  They put in an IV today and started back IV antibiotics for something more powerful.  He's still at 1.5 kg and in the incubator.  They did an HIV test when he was admitted and it was positive which just means that his mom was positive and he was exposed to the virus.  They have put him on prophylaxis as well....so he's taking AZT twice a day to hopefully help prevent transmission, but since it was just started, nearly a month after birth, it won't have the same effect.  I have some adorable pics we've managed to sneak and take this week, but until I have enough time on the internet, you'll just have to wait!  

Please pray for Jaime to get stronger and healthier with each and every passing day.  Pray for wisdom for his medical team that is taking care of him.  I'll update again when i know more and can get back online!  Thanks for all the prayers that have been sent up on his behalf so far.

In other news we have had 2 other admits......i still haven't been able to post about them (internet problem) so just get ready for some serious cuteness!  

---

Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don't worry about storage limits. Check it out.

Jaime looks better

I got to see Jaime today!!!  Little cutie.  Myself, another missionary, and my friend Emily headed into town today to visit him at our 30 minute window of opportunity once a day.  I was for sure, since they told me only one visitor, that only one of us could see him and that I wouldn't get to touch him in his incubator.  But, the nurse immediately told us to just gown up and go on in to see him.  Then left us alone at his bedside.  I pulled out his chart and started searching through it.  I was excited to see that they do a full system assessment every day and actually write it down in his chart.  This is quite a difference to any other unit I've seen here.  He's on their version of TPN (which is just liquid nutrition-not just clear IVF's but essentially lots of things he needs to grow!).  The nurse told me he was eating really well by bottle, but clearly if he needs supplemental nutrition by IV's then he's not eating all that great (or at least enough to sustain him and gain weight)!  I do have to say that he looks amazing to when we left him on Thurs.  So I think the antibiotics are working.  I would have touched and held him a little but I hadn't washed by hands and he was sleeping so well, I honestly didn't want to make him any worse off....maybe next time.  I'm excited and blessed that we found this gem of a unit and I pray it will be what keeps him alive and really helps him.  It definitely has the potential too.  He's on multivitamins and several antibiotics right now.  I guess since he's not on bililights (there was another kid on them in the unit) that his level was ok an in all honestly he didn't look too jaundiced today!  Praise the Lord, he seems to be getting better bit by bit.  Keep him and his father in his prayers.  His father has to travel 1 hr each way on buses to come see him so won't be able to see him but a few times a week and only during a 30 minute window.  Continue praying for the doctors and nurses to have wisdom in treating him and that they are compassionate and treat him like a baby without a mother since that what he is.  He still needs love and touch too!  I'll keep the updates coming as I know them!

update on Jaime

Anna got to see Jaime for a few minutes today.  He is in an incubator and is eating ok by mouth so they took out his ngt.  I don't know how much or often they are feeding him though.  He is getting antibiotics and the neonatologist said that he is very sick with an infection and is on a lot of antibiotics through his IV.  These first few days will be touch and go, but if he survives, he thinks he will probably stay in the hospital with them for the next month!  He was able to explain everything to Jaime's dad as well.

 

We found out from one of our tias who just had a premature infant a few days ago and her baby is in the same place as Jaime that they won't come out of the incubator till 1.8 kg.  That's a pretty legit weight.  Then if they are still eating everything by mouth they go to the second nursery where the mother (or surrogate in his case) kangaroos him all day long to keep him warm and feeds him....ie, does skin to skin contact with Jaime down her shirt so that he is warmed by her body heat.  It's actually a cool phenomena and there are studies to show that the mothers would actually run a fever to keep the baby warm.  Also, it's great for bonding.  Don't know how that works with a surrogate tia caring for a motherless baby, but you get the idea.  So the doctor thinks Jaime will be there for awhile which is great news for him and us! 

 

Please continue praying for Jaime and the hospital staff that is taking care of him, especially in these next few critical days.  Please pray for his father who loves him dearly and is worried about him.  Jaime's mother just died on the 14th, so I'm sure he is still quite in shock and mourning and very scared for his tiny son!

Jaime is admitted to the hospital

Last night after doing well all day, he pooped out and hardly took anything from his bottle.  I was up the majority of the night feeding him and checking in on him.  Then this morning when I assessed him, he quite worried me.  For all my NICU friends, he just had that look and coloring to him, you know when you can't actually say what's wrong, just to say he looks like crap and he needs help.  It was kinda like that.  So I called my director and asked if I could take him in for labs now or sit on him for another 24 hours, because in all fairness the tias were NOT grasping the seriousness of the situation and bothering the heck out of him and stimulating him way too much.  Preemies don't like lights and noise and being held, ect.  They can't handle it and they get tired very easily.  He was hotter than normal so I took the hot water bottle out of his makeshift incubator and let him cool off.  Within 2 minutes he was too cold.  His temperature was just so all over the place.  So I let it slide a little and decided that no matter what he'd get everything by tube at the next feeding.  When I went to check him, he also needed to be weighed.  He lost 2 ounces in the first 24 hours he was here, but there's the adjustment period and then the fact that we were actually feeding him and helping get his bili level down so he was pooping like a mad baby, so I just hoped for the best today.  When I weighed him, he had lost another 5.3 ounces on a kid that is tiny!  So a total of 7.5 ounces lost in 48 hours (2# 12 ounces now) And his temperature was 104 WITHOUT the hot water bottle and only one tiny thin blanket, a hat, a normal outfit and that's IT!!!  That was the end of that.....I brought him to the pediatric emergency room and prayed hard for a good doctor.  She was amazing and listened to my whole story, everything I was doing for him, and what his progress and changes had been in the last 48 hours.  She then fully assessed him from head to toe (the only other time I've seen them do that was with an unconcious 2 year old that had been seizing for over 2 hours continously!  She then said, he's going to stay in the baixa!  We'll do labs there.  Praise the Lord, but at the same time I'm kinda frightened for him.  So I looked through the papers she wrote for him and they are starting him on IV fluids and are going to give food through the ng tube and slowly assess how he is with a bottle.  They are going to do a full septic workup to see if he is sick including a urine specimen and a full chemistry panel including a bilirubin.  They are also doing an HIV and malaria test.  So after 1 stick the peds phlebotomist got the IV and the 10 ml of blood that he drained him of and off we went....except this time we went through the pediatric building, past the wards, and the baixa, and out into the street and down the lane.  I thought, where are we going......then they took us this really scary way through the inwards of our 3rd world hospital dungeon and up 5 floors in a creepy elevator and into a beautiful place they call the nursery above the maternity ward.  cept it's not for well babies, it's for preemies.  With incubators and space heaters to make the rooms warm and iv fluids, and ngt's and  lots of posters about how to recognize respiratory distress and keep a kid warm.  I thought I was in heaven for a second.  it was the most legit medical unit I've ever seen in Mozambique.  then she said, just leave him in this crib, take off his clothes, and you can leave.  see you tomorrow at visiting hours.  So we left him there all alone in a giant bassinet with fuzzy blankets next to the space heater and an old school incubator that I'm sure he'll be in before the night is out. 

 

Please pray with us that the neonatologist team (yup they have a whole specialty team instead of just general peds) will have wisdom and take the time to figure out what is wrong with him.  I pray that they let him stay there in a nice warm incubator and feed and grow and rest and mature for at least a week or so!!  and that he's FAT when he comes home.  I pray that he does not get any other illnesses while he is there and that the nurses will love on him (since a tia can't stay with him....just the nurses).  I pray that God will give Jaime a fighting spirit and a sense of peace and calm that will surround him as he is left alone in a crib/incubator day after day!

 

I will give updates as I know them.  Anna, the western nurse helping me will be going to visit Jaime tomorrow and hopefully giving me more information!  Also pray for us as we will be admitting a tiny newborn tomorrow 2 or 3 weeks old into our bercario because her mother died last week and her elderly father cannot care for her at this point.