SamuelBerry: 10 Sept - Dealing with the good news!

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” – CS Lewis

Mich and I are struggling to process the miraculous of the past four days:

On Wednesday Sammy came off the ventilator where the day before he barely breathed a breath on his own. The progression we and the nurses were expecting over at least a week was from ventilator to advanced CPAP, to CPAP and then to nasal prongs (then to unassisted breathing). Paul had other thoughts during the early hours of the morning and boldly decided that the best track for Sam was to jump him directly to the nasal prongs. He has been breathing with them ever since and saturating his oxygen beautifully!

- This great news on the state of his lungs in itself would have been more than enough good news for us but our spirits lifted yet another notch to hear that his breastmilk feeding had resumed at 0.5ml per hour where three days before a surgeon was examining him with the concern that his gut may have been dying.

- The lines going into his veins were reduced to two from three.

- The infection levels had dropped right down to the extent that the number of antibiotics he was being given was halved to two

- On Thursday Mich spent a good few hours gazing into his bright blue eyes and listening to his little mewl. Breastmilk was flowing into his continually strengthening gut at 2ml per hour (you try quadrupling what you eat in a day!). The swelling in his stomach reduced significantly.

- Between Friday and today there has been continued strengthening in his little bod and further reduction in the swelling. Tonight he was up to 4ml of milk per hour!

- But the highlight for us, almost four weeks since his birth, was Mich being permitted to have skin-to-skin contact for the first time today! It was a glorious sight seeing this little guy perched on his mom’s chest for the first time. A massive leap forward. Sam went onto the same type of monitor that all the other babies in ICU are on. Everything feels a lot more normal.

There’s a new spring in our steps and we are gradually allowing our mindsets to make the shift from avoiding death (or a living death) to enjoying the life that is becoming so evident.

Thank you for remaining so faithful to us in your prayers and actions. Please continue to lift up Sam’s little body and his guardians as together they keep the bugs at bay and Mich who continues with the battle of the breastpump - I stand in awe at the NICU freezer rack chocka with about 120 little brown bottles of the precious stuff.

Know that the retelling of the story is happening in a corner of the NICU at a hospital in Cape Town.

With love