Good-Bye Ventilator!

Jadon is vent-free! The Drs removed his ventilator on Saturday afternoon just before we arrived. Though we thought the fishy face was cute, we are glad to see his face ventless :-) They do have him on some O2 via nose tubes (cannula) but that is protocol when removing a ventilator. They have already backed him down on that and will continue to do that over the next few days. We also got to "practice nursing" the other day. Basically means I pump and then let him nuzzle skin to skin against me to get used to the idea of being near me. Hopefully we will be able to really work on nursing in the next few days. They want his pressure to be backed down a bit on the O2 before we full on try. There are four levels of pressure on the nasal cannula. He was backed down from four to three yesterday and they would like him down at one or two before we nurse. Mainly because at level three and four, he gets a little extra air in his tummy and we don't want him to suck down a couple of ounces of milk and then spit it all back up. But all of these steps are in the right direction! No specific date has been set but we anticipate to have him home in the next 7ish days. Pray now that he takes to nursing really well! That is the last step he has to master :-)