Day 1 Update

Day 1 (September 5--Labor Day)
Well, after getting a few hours of sleep, we visited with the boys again on Monday late morning.  They were relatively stable.  Unfortunately, Spencer was still not breathing regularly on his own.  And he was not getting enough oxygen.  The doctors said that his lungs were developed thanks to the steroids that were administered right after the Braxton-Hicks contractions and false labor around 32 weeks.  They said that the steroids were very good for the babies.  However, Spencer still had some fluid in his lungs (from birth) and that it wasn't draining as fast as it should.  So they put him on a nasal cannula with 30% oxygen to help him breathe more regularly and get more oxygen into his lungs (standard air has about 21% oxygen).  He was breathing better.  Dexter was doing great and was breathing easily on his own.  After lunch we came back to visit them again and the nurse said that Dexter was stable enough that if we came back after dinner, we would be able to hold him.  Barbara laid down to take a nap (we had had a VERY short night) while I tried to catch up on sending out e-mail notices to various friends and take care of various post-birth tasks that needed to be done.  After dinner, we went back and had a pleasant surprise, we were going to get to hold both babies.  The nurse had some concerns about Spencer's breathing so didn't want to get our hopes up, but during dinner, Spencer's breathing evened out, so she got Spencer ready for us along with Dexter.  We had a wonderful time holding both.  We have a wonderful photo of our family with Mom holding Dexter and Dad holding Spencer.  We also found out that on Day 2, they were going to try to move Dexter up to taking formula (at this point, both boys were being fed intravenously).  For Spencer, they wanted to wait until his breathing stabilized and he was off of the augmented air before starting him on formula.  After Barbara went to bed, I snuck over to see the boys one more time and had a nice quiet visit with them.