What a year of lessons!

WEEK ONE

Our little Leonidas was not supposed to arrive until the end of April. You can imagine my surprise looking out my bedroom window at 7:30 a.m. and seeing a head hanging out of Retta as she walked by on her way to the back pasture. It was March 28th and this cria was at least 26 days premature.

I ran through the house grabbing anything to put on over my pj’s yelling at Corey to get towels and Devin to go out with me. I arrived in the nick of time to catch him before he had hit the ground. Of course it was 40 degrees with winds of 30+ mph. Not the best climate for a preemie. We moved them both back to the barn and out of the wind. I used a blow dryer to dry him. He was so small. It seemed like every time I looked at him he got smaller. A whopping 8 lbs! He couldn’t stand but could sit up in a cush position. What to do now?… this is our first preemie!

We are so fortunate to have an enclosed horse barn with concrete flooring in the center aisle. We set up our foam show flooring, covered with thick hay and enclosed an area with panels under the ceiling heater. I brought towels, a heating pad, small space heaters and a thermometer for the floor to monitor the environmental temp. Then I brought thermometer, clean bottles, goats milk and cria coat. We closed all the doors and soon we had a controlled cria NICU.

How to feed him was the next step. I called the vet, Debbie Presley and Gail Van Staveren. We felt we should encourage the development of his sucking reflex as a priority equal to him getting the intake he needs. (that is easy to say) Retta, his dam, did not seem to mind as we started to milk her into a bottle. Another miracle… she had tons of milk! Just to be safe we supplemented with a little canned goats milk. And so it began…the saga, trials, setbacks and successes of our young man.

We fed him every 2 hours, 24 hours a day for the next 5 days. You know your husband loves you when he gets half the feedings so each of you get at least 4 hours of sleep t a time. We tried getting 2 to 4 ounces down him. Monitored his internal temp and the temp in his little room. As the external temp would rise we would remove a blanket, then cria coat, floor heaters turned down or off, and open the doors a little. He was gaining strength. Are we winning? I didn’t know if it was daylight, dark, if I was supposed to eat or not. Things get a little fuzzy.

We decided to name him Leonidas after the Spartan king. He was definitely thrown to the wolves and his survival would be up to him and his ability to adapt and fight. We now call him Nidas for short.

Wednesday morning I was looking for his poop. None. He was constipated. Now I find out it could be the goats milk and he will need a enema. There is one included in my cria kit, so I administered 1/4 to help him get moving.

CRASHED by noon! We thought he was doing great. We were so naive… we had done it. He was getting up and could almost stand under her. He was gaining a little at a time and his temp was holding with in guidelines. In as long as it took me to go back to the house to get my phone and return, he was flat on his side struggling to survive. I called Dr. Mike (my vet) in hysteria “He’s dying, come quick!”. He said to give him karo syrup or Gatorade. Preemies cannot regulate what they take in to maintain functioning levels of vitamins and electrolytes.

Dr. Mike arrived, assessed him and took action. He had a small amount of fluid in his lungs, was lethargic. He drew blood, administered anti-biotics and Sub-Q fluids containing electrolytes and vitamins. We would need to give him 300 ml of this fluid bag every 12 to 24 hours depending on how soon the previous dose was absorbed. You could tell by the size of the mass of fluid sitting under his skin at his rib cage. This was probably the hardest for me. I had never had to do anything like this. I actually almost passed out twice holding him while giving him his fluids. It worked within just a few hours he was able to sit and was much more alert and with us.

The next miracle. His IGg was 1200. We had done our part to ensure his immune was the best we could hope for thanks to Retta.