Raymond was born on October 20, 2024, weighing 1.5 pounds and was 12 inches long. He will have an extended stay in the NICU as his lungs develop and to allow him to grow. The doctors had to go up to 100% oxygen overnight and started to give Raymond medication to help with the fluids on his lungs. It’s the pulmonary hypertension causing his increase need for oxygen. He’s also had an increase in work of breathing in recent weeks so they did a lot of testing. They were checking to see if he has an inflammatory infection when they found his red blood cells were low and he has anemia so they had to do a blood transfusion, followed by more Lasix to help reduce fluid retention. They were going to complete a cardiac catheterization on January 15 to check the severity of his pulmonary hypertension. However, his respiratory culture had two bacteria on it—a pneumonia bug—so the procedure was postponed to January 22. Put under with anesthesia, Raymond’s procedure took three hours. The result of two balloon angioplasties and nitric oxide treatment informed the doctors of what medications and treatment they needed to give him. Sometimes babies outgrow hypertension and won't need follow up catheterization procedures. Raymond continues to require significant levels of oxygen support. To help his work of breathing, he had a tracheostomy tube placed on February 4. He also has an G-tube for feeding. Doctors had to remove his trach after his vitals began to crash. His lungs have collapsed and popped multiple times as large casts obstructed his airway. For the past month, he has received respiratory treatments and bag suctioning to remove these mucus casts while he was placed on ECMO. The decision to place him on ECMO was life-saving and required sacrifices to his jugular and carotid arteries on one side of his neck. After 10 days on ECMO, the surgeon removed the cannulas on February 23. Raymond is fighting off more infections and once he is well, the surgeon will replace his tracheostomy tube. He will require a nurse’s care once he gets home and we are looking for someone who will love and care for our sweet boy as much as we do.