Father's Day Edition – Baby updates

owen-fussy-video3

Today was my first Father's Day, so forgive me that the post is a bit late.  I spent most of the day milking this for all its worth.  I accidently got a nice video of Owen on my camera, when I thought that I was actually just taking a picture of him.  I can't figure out how to embed the video, in this post, however.  It's pretty cool, he's kicking around for about five seconds.  I think the link above should work.

The NICU now has some restrictions, as a result of the Swine flu case at the hospital.  Currently, no one can visit the babies in the NICU aside from parents and grandparents.

When we walk into the NICU, Bella is always the first bed on our right, so we usually go to see her first.  I got a couple of good pictures of her with her eyes open:

Bella Awake June 21

She's been very active lately.  If you look closely at this next picture below, you will notice that her right leg is safety-pinned to the bed.  Turns out that she's quite the feisty little girl.  We may need to heed this lesson when we bring her home:

You can only hope to contain her

Our little girl is up to 2lbs 6oz and she is now off her antibiotics from the pulmonary hemorrhage scare.  She's still on the ventilator to help her breathe but they started feeding her again today, 1/2cc per hour, so she is doing very well.  Honest to God, she is just so beautiful.  Nikki spent alot of time with her today and Bella just kept looking up at us, trying to figure us out.

Noah has had a terrific few days.  The big guy is up to 2lbs 13oz and he is now on the C-Pap where the mask over his nose just gives him a bit of oxygen as he does his own breathing.  Before we left tonight, they set his C-Pap to 21% O2 which is the same level as normal air.  If he can handle this steadily for a few days they may take the Oxygen mask off.  Nikki spent a lot of time with Noah tonight, stroking his head and also changing his diaper.  She showed great skill, despite the wires involved.  Here's a pic of Noah today:

Noah Chowing Down

I took a turn at changing Owen's diaper next.  It took me several minutes as I had to work around his wires and his colostomy bag.  He took it well, I think he was just giving his old man a break on Father's Day.  I joked with James, the nurse, that he was probably dreaming of being abducted and probed by aliens as I was doing that.  James was very nice about it all, but I'm pretty sure he had to go back and fix Owen's diaper after I left.  It's not easy, what with reaching your hands in the incubator holes to do all this.  It's clear that my wife has the early lead in the skills competition of Diaper Changing.

Owen had a bit of a respiratory setback with his Carbon Dioxide levels (registering 64 when they should be no higher than 45) in his blood, something they call testing the blood gases, and they will often do it two to four times per day.  His heart rate kept dropping, too.  As a result they had to put him back on the Si-pap at 10 breaths per minute.  He's also being treated for a Staph infection, though we're not entirely sure which one.  We know that the MRSA culture came back negative, so it's not one of the more nasty infections. 

On the plus side, having his small intestines sticking out of his belly hasn't seemed to have affected his appetite.  He is getting 5cc's of milk every hour, and if he goes up to six without any issues, they will take out his pick line (feeds lipids into his body) and just feed him the milk.  One less wire to worry about.  Hopefully we will see that milestone achieved this week. He's up to 2lbs 9oz now

All in all, it was a terrific Father's Day.  My wife got me an IPOD Touch so that I can spend even more time digitized.  Not sure she realized the ramifications of her gift purchase, but she soon will, that I can assure you.  The babies are doing terrific and apart from still not being able to hold them, and Nikki's father not being alive to see them, we feel pretty grateful about everything.

Happy Father's Day!

- Papa Charley