Mason gave us quite the scare on his second night of life. Around 9:00 pm Mason had a pulmonary hemorrhage, which means his lungs began to bleed and he required immediate medical attention. The neonatologist and nurses acted quickly and got the bleed stopped. The doctor said Mason responded very well to the treatment and that was a good sign that things would be ok. Due to the bleed in his lungs, Mason was put on a second machine that pumps nitric oxide into his lungs along with the oxygen. The nitric oxide helps to open up the lungs so that they can absorb more oxygen. Since this scare, Mason has been kept stable and is now being weaned off of his nitric oxide.
Mason also has a patent ductus arteriosus which means the blood vessel in the heart that normally closes at birth is still open. They have done two echocardiograms to look at his heart and are monitoring it closely. There is a medication that is given to close the vessel, but his second echo looked better so they are just going to watch it for a little bit. Also, he has pulmonary hypertension which is high blood pressure in the lungs. The doctor thinks that this could be part of the cause of the hemorrhage. He also said that the second echo showed that the hypertension was improving.
Some good news that we received today was that Mason's head ultrasound was normal and there was no bleed. They worry alot about this in premature babies because 90% of them happen within the first three days. They will repeat the scan on day 10 and day 30.
Today the doctor was cracking jokes while he examined Mason so that made us feel good about his condition. We just have to wait and see if we can continue to wean him off the nitric oxide. We also found out today that they are going to try to keep Mason at his birth weight for the time being. Once he starts eating and gaining weight we will update that stat daily.
Here is a video of Mason opening his eyes for a few seconds.
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