Sol was bright eyed and bushy tailed when I arrived to the NICU this morning. His nurse said that he’d been awake for an hour and had been very alert and looking around – very much in the same state as I’d left him the day before. After the doctors finished their rounds, the neonatologist stopped by to comment on how much his eyes were shining this morning. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed!

The big update for Sol’s progress today is that they were trying him without any respiratory support. We removed his oxygen shortly after I arrived and his levels looked great while I was there. I’m praying that the levels continue to remain high so he can stay off of oxygen permanently (one of the steps to getting him home).

Today, Mike and I also had a sit-down with the team of specialists working with Sol. One piece of news from this meeting was determining, with some level of certainty, that the origin of the blood clot that caused Sol’s stroke was most likely the placenta. From my research, this is not unusual though there isn’t any sort of explanation why this event takes place.

The other piece of really, really good news (the biggest news of the meeting) is that the doctors agreed to begin weaning Sol off of the Phenobarb. They agreed that his seizure activity is now stable enough and the most important thing now is to focus on getting him to wake up, learn how to feed from a bottle, and focus on occupational therapy.

While doctors say it could take another 2-3 weeks before he’s eating comfortably and can come home, I’m really hopeful that by removing the sleep-inducing Phenobarb, he’ll really start figuring things out next week. The neonatologist is optimistic based on his work with the pacifier and eating 1ml from a bottle yesterday. We’ll continue to practice with the pacifier over the weekend – practice makes perfect!