I'm sure the situation is a common one. The sick patient or premature baby is lying in front of you, hooked up to a number of machines, all beeping and flashing at different times. At first their presence is just another confusing aspect of the hospital, but as time draws on, their function becomes clearer. This one is to measure heartbeat, that one for respiration, and that one over there measures the percentage of oxygen saturation in Nathan's blood. At times it's difficult to focus on the patient. The statistics are too engrossing.

In the first days of life, we would be grateful for a weak movement of a limb, or a flutter of his eyelid, but after almost a week of slow deterioration, the focus is on the percentage of saturation of oxygen in Nathan's blood. It swings from too high to too low, following a pattern of wriggles and rests, delayed by thirty seconds as Nathan's movements work their effect on the percentage of oxygen saturation in Nathan's blood.

Nathan's nose is still very sore, and he is now back on a ventilator, which is set to do all all his breathing for him. Nathan is still receiving antibiotics, and is back on Morphine to allow him to relax, and to accept the ventilator tube. He isn't receiving his hourly feeds, as the nurses feel that the effort of digestion would be too much. Instead, he is on Dextrose and a mixture of Sodium and Potassium Chloride.

Unfortunately, Nathan's not doing too well off the CPAP, but the chloral and paracetamol are keeping him quiet.

Good news is that Nathan continues to put on weight. He now weighs in at 920g, a touch over two pounds.

The nurses have two substances that they can put between the CPAP and Nathan's nose. Comfyfeel is a very soft fabric, and Jellyperm is a jelly like substance that is both soft, and stops Nathan's nose from drying out.

On the home front, an eventful day. Laura was involved in a car accident (not her fault) . She's OK, but the car is probably a write-off. We planted a tree (Japanese flowering cherry - Amanogawa) in commemoration of Nathan's birth, and during the night, the roof leaked, damaging the new paintwork in Nathan's room. Sometimes it literally pours.

Nathan has been having bradys all day, and this, coupled with his nose becoming very sore indeed, and not being able to stay off the CPAP for more than a few minutes due to a suspected lung infection, has meant that he has returned to the hot room.

We now think that some of Nathan's grumpiness was due to his sore nose. A CPAP has two prongs, one up each nostril. It's tied to each of the two straps of his bonnet, and has to be tied quite tightly to stop it from being dislodged. This means that Nathan has had an intrusive piece of plastic pressed to his nose for the last few days, and it's not used to such treatment. It was getting rather sore (compare this to a few days ago when we were worried about a lot more than a sore nose).

To give Nathan a break, the nurses have oxygenated his incubator to 40%, and removed the CPAP. Nathan has to do a lot more of the work, but he seems up to the task. Let's hope he can keep off that nasty old CPAP, doing all his own breathing, so the nurses can slowly reduce the oxygen level in the incubator. Of course, it won't happen all at once, but here's hoping.

By the evening, however, Nathan had cheered up a bit. He still wriggled and cried, but could be calmed down, and was good enough to be allowed out for a cuddle.

In the end we spent two hours with him, fed him three times, changed his nappy, and cuddled him for about twenty minutes. So it wasn't such a bad day after all.

Apart from that, Nathan has been shows his mum and dad a few tricks when it comes to nappy changes. Suffice it to say that he'll never have trouble getting work as a pebbledasher. We spend the evening watching Nathan do sets of push-ups, or at least trying to...