Big brother is a big helper.

Coasters.

I was saving this one for a special occasion – I think that successfully getting through our first full day as a family of four qualifies.

Caleb Mitchell Kimes • 1/11/18 • 7lbs 14oz • 20.5”
He took the long way home, but he made it.

My boys.

Gifts from my sister’s Iraqi tour.

Caleb was moved to a normal crib and they have him off of everything except antibiotics (those stop tomorrow).

Carissa and I will stay overnight with him in the hospital tomorrow night and then he will get to come home Saturday afternoon.

Caleb made more good progress today.

• He is being fed with just a bottle now (instead of a tube). If he continues to do well with the bottle, they will take his feeding tube off tomorrow.
• His jaundice levels are way down. If they go down just a little more tonight, they will take him off phototherapy tomorrow morning.
• His breathing and oxygen levels are still good.
• All of the precautionary tests they ran game back negative. He has one more tonight, but there is not indication that we should be worried about it.
• They will take him off antibiotics on Friday.

If everything stays good and he keeps eating well, he could come home as soon as Friday or Saturday.

Such a good Momma. Giving Caleb his first bottle.

When your brother is sick and it keeps you from seeing Mommy and Daddy, sometimes you get to bend the rules and lie down in the coffee table at 10:30 🤷‍♂️

Hard to beat a celebratory lunch date to Midway on a cold day.

Big news! Caleb’s doctor just took him off of the oxygen! He is breathing room air now.

Assuming his breathing continues as it should, all that is left is getting his jaundice levels down and easing him into eating more food.

I hope this means that we are on the home stretch.

Caleb is only making small progressions, but he is progressing.

His respiratory rate is still spiking sometime, but his breathing is doing much better. I can tell just by looking at him that breathing is coming easier to him. His entire body was shaking with every breath before, but he looks pretty much normal most of the time now.

THEY have lowered his oxygen more to 35%. The lowest it can go to is 21%, so we are getting close.

We are still waiting on the results of a couple more tests, but we should have them soon.

Under the lights.

We have a ton of people that are wanting to follow how Caleb is doing in the hospital, so I thought I would put together a page that had all of the latest updates. If you go to rosskimes.net/caleb, it will have the full list of updates on him along with a few pictures. I hope to update at least once a day, but it could be more. Hopefully this is not something that we have to keep going for too much longer.

This does not mean than you can’t text or call Carissa or me to see how he is doing. I just wanted to provide an easy way for anyone who wanted to follow along. Your texts and calls are always welcome!

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For today’s update:

His respiratory rate is still high, but it is dropping. Last night, it dropped low enough that they could start feeding him through a tube. This is great because even though he was getting all of the nutrition that he needed through the IV, he has felt hungry the entire time because his stomach way empty. Once he gets some food in him, he should be much more comfortable.

They have been lowering the amount of oxygen that he is being given over the last two days. As long as his vitals stay stable, he should be down to 45% later today (he was at 100% two days ago).

His respiratory rate has not recovered as much as typical babies that were born at 37 weeks, so they are going to run some more tests over the next couple of days. That are not expecting to find anything because he is not exhibiting any other symptoms. We are praying for everything to come back negative here and that his recovery being a little slower is just because he needed the extra time.

They put some light over him because his jaundice levels have been rising the last couple of days, but that is not a big deal at all.

Now that he is breathing a little better and is able to eat, we get to see and interact with him more. Carissa and I have each had turns holding him the last couple of days, which has helped up tremendously.

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Also, I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who has come to visit, brought us food, or just called or texted to check on us. I feel like we have an army of people who are begging to help us any way that they can. It means a lot to our whole family.