A Better Day

For the first time, I got to visit the babies all alone during the morning visit. Brooke had to go in to her work today, since she left rather suddenly when her water broke back in the middle of June. When she got there, she found that they were throwing her a surprise baby shower! And what a shower it was! They gave her all sorts of great gifts and had a cake and made her feel truly happy. It was the first time that she’s actually celebrated the babies—every time she’s tried to be happy about things prior to now something has happened to put a damper on it. So to the fine folks at Genmab, thank you; you really are the best!

On to baby updates:

Lily’s stay on BiPAP lasted approximately five hours. Her respirator tube got clogged around 6 pm yesterday and they decided to try the BiPAP. Lily did not like that too much. She had episodes and dropped her heart rate and respiration, and she just seemed unhappy. So the on-call doctor decided that poor Lily Bug needed the respirator. They put in a wider respirator tube, and so far it’s working great. Her oxygen numbers are better than they’ve ever been. Plus, she now is eating 10 ml of breast milk so she’s putting on weight consistently. She’s now up to 890 grams and is filling out really well.

Charlie continues to be exactly the same. He’s eating a lot (18 ml) and sleeping a lot on his belly. He continues on the respirator. Dr. Hiatt says that he’ll stay on the respirator until he reaches 1200 grams, which isn’t too far off—he’s at 1020 grams today. When he’s ready, he’ll get some steroid shots to help his lungs and then try the BiPAP. Besides his breathing and his eating, the other thing that remains consistent with Charlie is his amazing cuteness. Obviously we’re biased, but everyone who sees him swears that he’s adorable—even the nurses who are around babies all day say that he’s cutest one there. He must take after his daddy. (And Brooke continues to gawk about Charlie’s beautiful eyebrows. Really, it’s kind of weird how much she talks about them.)

Annaleigh is right where she was a couple days ago. She’s not eating because she’s having so many digestive issues. Her belly remains distended though not as badly as it was. Tomorrow she’s going to have a field trip to the radiology department for a special x-ray. Basically, the doctors are going to inject her with some dye that absorbs moisture from her GI tract and glows on the x-ray screens. They’ll use that to track the path of the dye and see what’s holding up her poop from being normal. Dr. Hiatt says that the test is as much medical as it is diagnostic, so we’re anxious for this tomorrow.

We had a nice visit tonight with the babies. There were no last-minute oxygen drops, no breathing issues… it was very pleasant. Let’s hope all our visits are like this one!

PS: Thanks to all for suggesting that we look into the free parking issue. Turns out, our friends Christina and Doug called today because they wanted to pre-pay our parking for us (how nice is that?!). They were told that we could get free parking passes from the charge nurse in the NICU. We asked about it and should have it ready tomorrow. So thanks Christina and Doug-- you just saved us a boatload of money!!!