Welcome, Luke! (Updated)

Baby Luke is here! He arrived at 2:08pm weighing in at 8lbs 5oz (one ounce under Kaycie's birth weight) and 19 3/4 inches.

Kaycie was fascinated by Baby Luke. She wanted to hold him. She wanted to touch him. She said he's "MY baby Luke!" I suspect this fascination will last exactly until we get him home, and then she'll change her mind!

Unfortunately, he was having some issues breathing when he arrived. They thought he had some fluid on his lungs but while the nurses were monitoring him in the transition nursery he turned blue. Three times. So he had to make a little trip to the NICU. We're waiting to hear from the NP about exactly what they think is wrong. Could be that he is just big and moving his head around sometimes blocks his airway. Could be his little lungs aren't quite fully developed. Could be an infection. Could be a dozen other things. I refuse to panic until we know more. I can't freak out over so many possibilities, so it's better to just wait. They said it would probably be close to 9 before we talked to anybody, so I'm trying to kill time on my computer. I'll update this post when we know something. In the meantime, if I'd know what was going on I would have declined the percocet. I'm getting woozy and need to keep my head clear.

UPDATE:

Soooo...

We still don't know what's wrong, but we have some guesses and are working on getting it figured out. They are taking precautionary measures against infection because his white blood cell count was high, although the ratio of immature to mature cells wasn't really out of wack. They did a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis and will be putting him on antibiotics until they get all the cultures back in a couple of days. During the lumbar puncture they found blood in the fluid that didn't clear out, so the neonatal doc was concerned about a possible small brain hemorrhage. He's getting an echocardiogram as we speak and is being scheduled for a CT to look at the brain and check for bleeds. Doc said that can cause irritation including the breathing problems he's having.

Meanwhile, he's on a ventilator to help him keep breathing due to a bit of a panic in the NICU when they couldn't get him jump started earlier. The plan right now is to keep him for five days after he's off the vent and not having episodes. We haven't seen him since 3pm when they took him to the transition nursery in a bit of a rush because of the concerns about his breathing. Waiting and waiting and waiting for them to finish the tests so we can go see him in NICU.

This is going to be one hell of a long week.