Blood Transfusion Time

In the NICU there are a lot of procedures and equipment commonly used with babies like Samuel.  Now Samuel is a fighter and does really well over all!  In fact my neighbor has decided Sampson is an appropriate nick name because he is such a fighter!

Some examples of his amazing progress is the fact the was only on the ventilator for less than 24 hours!  Go Samuel!  Also when we started Mother's milk feedings he took them extremely rare.  He almost never had residual and that continues to be the case.  That meant we were able to take out the IV pretty quick!

Here is now yet another example about the miracle of Samuel.  Today he received a blood transfusion!  Yes, that is some what miraculous!  It is my understanding that preemies, like Samuel, tend to need blood transfusions.  Yes, I meant to write that in plural, multiple blood transfusions.  In fact, they only receive a third of a unit of blood and it isn't unusual for them to eventually receive 2 or 3 transfusions from it, using the entire unit!

The thing is generally preemies like Samuel would have already received their first transfusion.  Samuel is almost 4 weeks old (tomorrow) and is just receiving his first one.  So I consider that to be amazing.  Now he has received it.  It was a 4 hour transfusion process and it happened from about 1:30 to 5:30.

There were a few factors for why we decided to give him one.  First, his blood count has been just been hovering above the line of needing it.  Second, having more blood can give him an energy boost to do better with oxygen (maybe go back to vapotherm in the next few days and not go back to CPAP??) and weight gain.  Ever since about the 18th of February he has been staying at either 2#14oz or 2#15oz, never quite hitting 3#.  The Doctor was a little concerned about this as he was gaining and then pretty much put the brakes on that.

We are hopeful that this blood transfusion will do what it does for these preemies--give them the boost to keep moving forward.  He has been slowly but surely progressing, but that progression has definitely slowed down a little too much.  Samuel has not digressed at all, but we would like to keep seeing signs of forward motion.  Maybe over the weekend I'll be able to announce that he hit 3 pounds!  That will be wonderful!  (just remember a particular weight level is not the goal for release, just that he is showing weight gain)

Today Samuel's been really fussy, but that has a lot to do with getting stuck with a new peripheral IV, going through the usual cares, and having the blood transfusion (that actually didn't interfere with him much, except at the beginning and the end to hook it up and take it away).  Hopefully tonight as we aren't poking at him much he'll go back to being pretty well content.