Kids, don't try this at home

Last night we visited Roscoe and saw him with his breathing tube out. He is still on breathing support, but is using an external mask only. Last night his oxygen requirements were up around 60%, but today when we went to visit him he was down to 38%. Right now the air is getting pushed into his lungs at a specified rate with a specified pressure. As he progresses in maturity, the nurses will slowly wean the amount of air pressure that Roscoe is receiving until there's no positive pressure to fill his lungs. At that point he'll just have higher-than-normal oxygen available, but he'll have to breathe it in all on his own.

Here is Roscoe with a setup that one of the nurses came up with to hold his pacifier in, because he's so fidgety and likes to pull on anything near his mouth. We've found that even though there's so much high-tech medical equipment available in the hospital, sometimes nurses still have to improvise to get the job done right. She warned us not to do this at home, but since he's on oxygen and heart rate monitors it was a safe way to pacify him during his hospital care:

He kept pushing out his pacifier, so the nurse used a nose sucker (mini turkey baster) to hold the pacifier in his mouth. Then she used a grippy heating pad to hold the nose sucker in place to keep it from scooting away from his mouth.