18 February

This morning I dropped in for a reasonably short time. He was quite settled, fast asleep, and hadn’t had any chloral since 10pm the night before. I checked his chart, and there had been no braddys for hours – but the last one was a doozy. He’d had CPAP off in order to have a weigh (weight now 2195g), and really didn’t cope – big episode. But, since then, OK.
I phoned in at 12.30 to see if he’d be up for a cuddle (as we’ve been told to try and do daily cuddles from now on, wherever possible), and as he’d only had one braddy since I left, I drove in. On the way, he had another one(!), but they gave him a huge suction out, and I held him anyway. He stayed on CPAP throughout, and after a bit of initial wriggling, settled really well and went off to sleep. All up, I held him for about an hour, at which point he began to wake up, and wriggle, so we put him back.
His bag had leaked, and he needed a nappy change, so I left them tidying him up!
It’s still enormously hard to watch him, but he’s getting bigger, and definitely stronger, so it’s nice to hold him. He didn’t braddy or apnoea or change colour at all during the hold, and his saturations didn’t drop below 70% - in fact hardly below80%. He sat in 23-27% oxygen until it was time to move him, so I was very pleased. Well done, Max.