Down and Up

So the latest news has been very much up and down. William did not have a very good day yesterday, and by the time early afternoon rolled around, we had a pretty difficult chat with the doctors. William's numbers were looking so bad, and they were on a trend getting worse, where they were very legitimately concerned and expecting him to maybe not last the night. He's bounced back for now, but he has little wiggle room for us to support him more.
Anyways, we spent a good chunk of time deciding how we may want to spend some of our last moments with William and got in touch with a couple of our pastors from Covenant who were so kind to come baptize William. It was really special. He didn't like the water on his head much and made a face when the water hit his face for the third time.
As part of this, we both got to spend time actually having skin to skin contact with William. Which was absolutely incredible. I don't even know how to describe it, but for the few hours I was holding him, the world just felt a lot more whole than it's felt in a while, and it was one of the best things I've had the privilege to experience.
Jeff got to hold him, too and it was equally special to watch him hold William. We had a photographer come in who took some candid family photos of us, someone who volunteers their time to come and take pictures of people in our situation.
The miraculous thing is that William started oxygenating better when we were holding him, than he had for the past few days. Which bought him more time. And a little more time.
All of Jeff's family was able to come visit and eventually my parents also arrived just after midnight after driving all afternoon and evening. It's been wonderful having everyone here.
So, William is doing much better, and we are so blessed that he is still with us right now. The docs are frankly surprised he made it through the night. Now, we're basically playing it hour by hour, day by day to see how things go. He's not on quite as much support as he was yesterday, but there's not much higher we can go. He's still on 100% oxygen, which is what he needs right now to recover from his longer period of bad saturation, but we really need to be able to dial him down to prevent some of the serious side effects prolonged oxygen exposure can cause.
So, we are VERY aware of William's precarious situation right now. We are overjoyed he is with us today and Grandma Pierce (or whatever her new title is) got to watch a feeding and diaper change!
William's platinum blonde peach fuzz hair is still growing, his eyebrows came in, and we can see some eye lashes, too.
He was starting to crack open his eyes yesterday on our chests, too. It's like watching an egg hatch!
Through the night, he was saturating very very well and he has continued generally on that path so far. He seems pretty tuckered out today, or at least much more peaceful and sleepy. We're all exhausted as well.

We need the prayers to continue. Prayers that William keeps on fighting, that he continues to have a good heartbeat. That he saturates well with oxygen and that his blood pressure stays where it needs to, to support him. That William maybe has a poop! That he doesn't have an infection from the new arterial line that gave us trouble on Thursday.
That his blood sugar comes down a little again.
That mommy and daddy know how to take care of themselves and rest when they need to.
Today, William is ten days old.