The first few days

Amy mostly cried the first few days. Hopefully you can forgive her if you tried to call and talk-- she was dealing with a lot of scary things. One of the scariest: hormones. Duncan was put on an Oscillator in the first few hours. It is a machine that blows hundreds of breaths per minute into his lungs. This keeps the lungs open full-time and gives a good deal of oxygen. The first day he was up to 60 percent oxygen that he needed. (Christian remembers 100%). By the end of the second day he was down to 30. A goal would be 21 percent, like room air, what you and I are breathing right now. Other problems that showed up in the first few days included a grey abdomen which could have indicated necrotic bowel, meaning dead bowel. This would require the dead tissue be removed from his abdomen. Not good. He was also trying to learn to breath with lungs which didn't develop well enough in the low amniotic fluid ("hypoplasia") and were "stiff". He was what the fancy doctors like to call "sick". He was on drugs to help with pain, drugs to make him sleep, drugs for blood pressure, IV fluids to "feed" him and fat, called Lipids, to help fatten him. He could not eat because of the problems with blood pressure and dead bowels. He was also Jaundiced and had to be under photo therapy. It makes for better picture-taking (without the photo therapy, his incubator would have been covered by a blanket) and he got to wear cool shades (to protect his light-sensitive eyes), so jaundice was the least of our worries.