Donovan Hovsep Eden

February 13, 2011
After my water broke February 2, I went into the hospital on bed rest to try to prevent going into labor. I was able to stay pregnant for 9 days after, and was given medications to speed development, all of which helped our son to grow stronger.
After a very short labor that started just after midnight, I gave birth to Donovan Hovsep Eden naturally on February 11 at 6:06 am. He weighs 2 lbs and is 13.5 inches long. He is very premature, since I was only a little over 25 weeks pregnant, but he is doing quite well considering his young age and shows my mother's strength. He has dark hair, seems very feisty and even has little muscles. He looks like Rob to me!
Donovan is an Irish name that means dark haired or dark haired warrior, which we think is appropriate. His middle name, Hovsep, is the Armenian version of Joseph. I wanted to honor my mother, and her maternal grandfather's name was Joseph (technically Guiseppe). I think she would have liked that.

Although Donovan's prognosis is somewhat uncertain at this point, we have a lot to be grateful for. Given what we know, the risk of serious problems is fairly small. He is in the best NICU in the region and they are taking excellent care of him, so we have every reason to be hopeful. He may have some mild developmental or behavioral issues in the future, but considering how well he is doing right now, he is probably going to be fine overall. I have been reading some of the statistics from the March of Dimes, and talking with his doctors and nurses and a lot of the news is encouraging. The probability of serious complications is fairly low- less than 20% for most of the major issues. The NICU nurses all think he is actually maybe a week older than what the doctors at the hospital told us, which i suspect too, because the due date they told me at the hospital is different than the due date my doctor told me. It makes sense because he is fairly big and has some muscle tone, he is able to open his eyes, cry and is digesting my milk through a feeding tube already- all these things are very advanced for a 25 week old.
He has some mild jaundice which they have been treating with phototherapy, so he is wearing a soft eye covering to protect his eyes. His bilirubin levels are already going down, so it's working. He is on antibiotics for the rest of the day, but his white cell count is down today from what it was (and it was only mildly elevated to begin with, which is probably a result of the steroid injections that I received last week to develop his lungs).
He was removed from the ventilator today and put on CPAP, which is non-invasive and just uses air pressure to keep his lungs open, but it does not breathe for him, so he is breathing on his own. They are monitoring his breathing and we should know more today. He may have to go back on the ventilator if he does not handle it well, but the doctor thought he could handle it. He is tolerating feedings well and putting out urine and stool, which means his stomach and intestines are functioning properly. If he wasn't we would be worried about necrotizing enterocolitis, but so far he seems fine. The breast milk itself helps prevent infections and keep him healthy.
The next hurdle will be to get his PDA closed. This is a blood vessel between the heart and lungs which normally closes at birth in full term babies, but in preemies, their muscles are not strong enough to close it, so medication is given to close it. We will know in 2 more days if the medication is working, and if it doesn't, he may need surgery to correct it, but they told me it's a small PDA, so they are hoping it will close with the medications, and if it doesn't, the surgery is very straightforward and has an excellent success rate. Right now it does not seem to be affecting his lung function, so we are hopeful that it will resolve.
There is also the possibility of retinopathy of prematurity which is, in simplest terms, abnormal growth of blood vessels in the retina, but the risk is only about 7%. If it does occur, there are treatments, but he may end up with a degree of vision loss.
On Monday they are going to do a brain ultrasound to make sure he doesn't have any bleeding in his brain from delivery, but he will hopefully be fine since the delivery was very smooth and fast, and he didn't have any oxygen deprivation or serious heart decelerations during labor. From what the doctors tell me, if he does have any bleeding, it can resolve on its own without any problems, although the possibility is there for more serious issues. But I'm not going to worry about what we don't know yet. We need to celebrate to good things, and there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful right now. He is doing much better than expected for such a young baby.