Finn is now a week old, and it has certainly been an eventful last seven days!

Like any micro preemie, Finn has needed a lot of help, from a respirator to blood transfusions to phototherapy lights to countless other little helping hands. There are a million things the NICU team here at Beth Israel is monitoring, with the two most important being Finn’s respiratory system and his cardiovascular system.

The news is generally pretty good on both of those fronts. Finn did actually cry out a tiny bit when he was born, though given his gestational age, he was pretty quickly intubated and put on a respirator. After a day or so, he was switched to a high frequency ventilator — a big, noisy machine that pumped hundreds of breaths a minute into his tiny lungs — to try to stabilize his breathing, and he responded well to it. By Thursday morning, he was back on the regular respirator, and he’s made slow but steady progress since. He’s been weaned down from extra oxygen to regular “room air” at this point, and Finn’s respiratory therapists have slowly pulled back on the automatic breaths per minute that he’s being given as he assumes more of the responsibility himself. It will be quite some time before Finn is ready to breathe fully independently, but the doctors and we are encouraged by the early signs.

As far as Finn’s heart, the doctors are thus far seeing nothing abnormal for a 25 week micro preemie. His heart rate has generally been pretty good, as has his blood pressure. He is being treated with medicine for a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), which is a blood vessel that is supposed to close after birth, but often does not in premature babies.  We should get follow up results on how that treatment is going in the next few days, but the early indications are generally positive.

Aside from that, things look pretty good considering the circumstances. He started in with meals on Wednesday afternoon, and was enjoying his 1 mL of breastmilk every three hours until they had to hit the pause button yesterday afternoon, just for as long as he’s taking his medicine for the PDA. He is still below his birth weight, which is to be expected — especially because this morning saw his first real poop!  Word is that his older brother Dermot is very proud. Both Dad and Mom have done diaper changes… though Dad has been responsible for more of them!

Mom has now had a chance to hold him three times, and it’s clear that Finn loves snuggling with her. He has a long ways to go before he can graduate from his isolette (his incubator) and be snuggled at any time, so Mom and Dad will take what they can get for now.

Finn’s milestones this week include:

• On Monday, July 25, Dad lifted Finn up and held him for the first time (as his nurses changed his bedding underneath him).
• On Wednesday, July 27, Mom changed her first diaper, and Finn had his first feed.
• On Thursday, July 28, Mom held Finn for the first time, as they did skin to skin for 45 minutes.