BPD clinic

We had another doctor appointment Friday. This time it was at the BPD clinic(Bronchopulmonary dysplasia also called chronic lung disease) at Vanderbilt Children's hospital. This clinic handles Cooper's oxygen requirements and some of his nutrition.


We have visited this clinic every month since Cooper came home in March. They have turned him down twice, from 0.8 liters of oxygen to 0.3 now .We were told that we were going to wean him slowly. They always put him on a pulse oximeter to check his oxygen saturation and heart rate. On Friday he was sating 99 so we decided to do a "room air" test. We turned his oxygen tank off and took the prongs out of his nose. He remained on the monitor and we watched to see what he would do. He did fantastic!! A "normal" person should be somewhere from 97-100%. Anything over 92% for Cooper is considered good. He remained above 90 the whole time with his average at 93%. That is a little low so she decided to put him on 0.1 liters and watched. He hung out around 95%, which is pretty good! He was up and down a bit so she decided on 0.2 liters, just to be safe...Until the doctor came in.

Cooper has been having trouble finishing bottles. He is fluid restricted because BPD babies tend to hold fluid in and it makes breathing harder. Due to this restriction, we are on a tight feeding schedule. I have asked to have it changed, but was told no because of the restriction. Cooper sleeps all night!! He refuses to eat in the middle of the night. I spent many nights fighting him for an hour to an hour and a half trying to get him to eat at 2:00 in the morning! NO FUN! Because of this bottle being removed from the schedule, we had to get the required amount in while he was awake. This made us feed him every 3 hours from 7am-10pm. When his fluid was increased, he was too full from the previous feed to finish the bottles, not to mention barely eating the solids. After terrible weight gain last week, 6 ounces in a month, we were allowed to bump up his feeding and spread out over 4 hours! Finally!! Because of this new schedule, he gained 5 ounces in a week!! Not bad, but not great!


In May, Cooper was in the 50th percentile for weight and height proportion. (We are not on the chart for weight or height...but we are close!) Friday we were down to the 1st percentile. :(
The doctors want to rule out any feeding issues, so they ordered a swallow study for later this month. The doctor didn't want to turn him down until after the study was done, so we are still on 0.3 liters. I am pretty confident that the issue was the schedule not the way he eats, but time will tell!! I am also confident we will get turned down next visit!