Sunday, July 10, 2011

Lots of Love

Today was Stephen's first day back at work, so I spent most of the day at the hospital in order to hold both the boys.  Anna visited for a bit and then went home with Grammee.  She does very well in the NICU and just sits and colors or plays with stickers.  (I do need to work the timing out better, though, because I did not intend to spend 6 hours there...it's not fair to Anna on the weekend).  William just had a bath on Friday, so I gave him a wipe down in his "baby bed," as Anna calls it, and then had good snuggle time.  Both boys did really well.  I look forward to the day that I can hold both of them at once!

We weighed and measured both - William wins the weight contest, with a whopping 1lb 15 oz.  He is now an ounce over his birth weight, which is excellent.  Aaron started out at 1lb 15oz and is down to 1lb 11oz... he should start to catch up as his feeds increase.  Aaron wins on length, measuring 14.5 inches and slightly ahead of William's 14 inches.  They started out at 13.5 and 12.5 respectively.  Both boys are both up on their feeds as well - William moved to 10ccs every 3 hours, and Aaron up to 4ccs.  One ounce is equal to 30ccs, so it's still just a tiny bit of milk, but definitely better than none! 

Since yesterday focused mainly on Aaron, William decided he wanted some attention today.  After holding him, he decided to have a little apnea/bradycardia spell, where he stopped breathing and his heart rate went down.  This is fairly common in micropreemies.  The doctor increased his caffeine dosage to help him remember to breathe.  I'm not sure that I mentioned the caffeine yet...this is also typical with preemies.  Both boys get caffeine every few hours to help prevent the spells.  I told the nurse that I would be more than happy to drink coffee all day (I need it) so that they can get it from my milk, but she didn't seem amused.

As I was getting Anna ready for bed tonight, I received a call from the NICU nurse letting me know that William had another spell, and was getting blood work done to make sure he doesn't have an infection.  Depending on the results of the blood work, he could be going back to CPAP.  I called back later to get the results, and there's no sign of infection, but his hematocrit levels have dropped.  He should be receiving a blood transfusion right about now (have you donated lately?  have you realized that you could be saving itty bitty boys like mine? :) )  I also spoke with the nurse practitioner on duty to find out possible causes, as I was concerned that this could indicate additional bleeding in the brain.  She seemed fairly confident that his bleeding is stable so he probably wouldn't have any more, and that it was just a slight drop.  So much blood is being taken from their little bodies for lab work that it's hard for them to keep up.  He may receive another transfusion or two during his stay, but they should lessen as they get bigger.

Overall, though, it was another good day.  I'll try to put more pictures up tomorrow :)  Now it is time for bed!

1 comment:

  1. My girls both got transfusions once a week for the first 6-8 weeks, so yes the ansfusions are normal. As they both get bigger they should out of the spells. Your boysbare both doing great, my girls were on the vent for 3 and 6 weeks respectively.

    ReplyDelete