W2.D1 - Anything you can do, I can do better...

[ 2 posts in one day -- I had time last night to get a little caught up on the blog.  To read them in order, go down to the next post and read it first. -Ted. ]


Monday was a day of highs and lows.  It was like a tennis match, good news/bad news/good news/bad news.

We slept in again.  We’re taking full advantage of the fact that there is a 24x7 nursing staff watching the boys and are easing into the parenting business in 12 hour shifts.  We come in for virtually all feedings and touch times from 12:30 PM until the 12:30/1:30 AM shift (I get out of there about 2:00-2:15).  Then we sleep in.  All too soon, they’ll be all ours and we’ll have to do the around the clock support and will become the same zombies that most other parents become when their children are born.

So we went to try a little local restaurant that is so very Pennsylvanian.  The food was good and included a lot of old familiar Pennsylvanian Dutch culture that reminded me of home.  We’ll definitely come back again.

When we got in for the 12:30 feeding, we found more great news.  Spencer’s breathing was so strong that they had taken him off all oxygen support and he is now breathing well on his own.  What amazing progress in just a few days!  They are also slowly decreasing his IV intake which includes nutrient supplements and he should be off of that in the next day or two.  At that point, he’ll have very few cables attached and will be much like Dexter.  Woo hoo!

We feed Dexter at 12:30 and take care of him.  So far, it’s pretty much the same.   At 1:30, it’s time for Spencer.  At 1:30, they decided to test Spencer with bottle feeding again and since we’re there, they let us do this.  Since Barbara has never gotten to hold Spencer yet, I do the feeding for Dexter and Barbara does the care of Spencer and then gets to hold him and bottle feed him.  This is the first time Barbara gets to hold Spencer—talk about a special treat!  And for an added bonus, since Dexter is pretty stable, the doctor says it is fine for us to disconnect Dexter from his monitor cables and bring him over to Spencer.  So I carried Dexter over to where Barbara is feeding Spencer.  It’s the first time since Spencer had all of the breathing problems that the boys have been together and we got our second family photo together.  Not the best photo, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty more in the future, but an important photo nonetheless.  However, despite all this, Spencer still isn’t quite ready to each on his own, but he’s catching up to his brother!

So we work on scheduling the rest of the day.  We’ll come back for Dexter’s 6:30 feeding and attempt to get him to take a bottle again.  We’ll be there for Spencer’s 7:30 feeding and will try to get him to take a bottle again.  Then we’ll come back and Mommy and Daddy will give Dexter a bath—the first baby bath that either of us has given.  They want to schedule the bath for one of the times when Dexter is not trying to bottle feed because the bath, and the water (which lowers his body temperature a bit) and changing the bedclothes, etc is pretty disruptive and will sap some of his energy and he may not be able to give the bottle feeding his best effort.  So we schedule the baby bath for 9:30.

Because of this, we’ll need to eat quickly between 8:30 (when we finish with Spencer’s feeding) and 9:30.  So, for lunch we go back to the Italian place that we liked that had the big portions so that we can just reheat leftovers for dinner.  Great…we’ve got our plans in place.  We again take the 3:30/4:30 feeding off to rest up for the big evening ahead and for Barbara to finish the things that she needs to wrap up for work. 

At 6:30, we go in to feed Dexter.  He’s still not quite ready for bottle feeding.  He takes a little (say 4 ml), but the nurse mentions that if he’s not actively drinking and sucking, then about 2 ml worth is from moving the bottle around trying to get him to drink.  That movement drips some formula into his mouth and he is just eating what’s dropped into his mouth without actively trying to suck milk from the bottle.  Oh well.

At 7:30, we feed Spencer and, lo and behold, he actually actively eats.  He drinks slowly, but he actually takes several long sucks and takes the milk from the bottle.  He manages to get about 10 ml on his own.  And he’s only been trying for a day or so.  By now, Spencer is up to about 38 ml of formula per feeding, so he gets the remaining 28 ml by feeding tube.  Dexter is again allowed off of his monitoring cables and can come to visit Spencer while he is feeding.  So nice to actually be able to hold them side by side.

So at 8:30, we leave and go to heat up our meals and have our one hour of down time.  We heat up dinner, get set up and just sit down (around 8:45) when a nurse comes in a informs us that they need our room.  The rest of the ward is full and another mother in labor has just come in.  We ask if we have a half hour, and the nurse sheepishly tells us “Less would be better.”  So we scarf down our dinner in about a minute, then we pack up.  We’re packed up in about 20 minutes (about 9:05/9:10).  But we can’t really pack up the car because we need to go into the NICU for Dexter’s bath in about 15-20 minutes and it’s a bit of a hike back to the car.  They let us put our bags into a small private waiting room on the ward.  We get this down with about 10 minutes to spare before we have to go in for Dexter’s bath.  Whew!

So, at 9:30, Mommy and Daddy go in and bathe a baby for the first time, giving Dexter a bath.  We didn’t do too badly and only need to ask a couple of questions of the nurse on duty.  Pretty good and then we dress him again and change the bedclothes on his bed.  He’s all set for a NG feeding (through the feeding tube).

So at 10:15, we’re ready to head out and get ourselves over to the local hotel.  We run over to the local Hampton Inn and decide we’ll just check in until Sunday, just to be safe.  While we’re checking in, the clerk finds out that although the hotel has a room for tonight (Monday night), they are booked for Tuesday AND Wednesday night.  Why?  No idea.  *sigh*  So we check in for one night and we’ll have to play it by ear for Tuesday night.  We had been told that there were some mothers in the maternity ward that might be discharged on Tuesday during the day, so we may be able to stay in the hospital again.  If not, we’ll have to find other options.  I check on-line and there are Marriott properties in a nearby city (about 25 min away) that we can stay.  Not ideal, but we’ll manage.   That will decrease the number of visits that we have to the boys, but we’ve spent a lot more time with our boys than any of the other NICU parents (who have been commuting to and from the hospital from their homes).  Additionally, we can get Marriott rewards points which we use when we go to Cincinnati for Barbara’s eye checkups.  Oh well, another day-by-day decision that we’ll worry about tomorrow.  We’re onto backup plan C and possibly backup plan D by now.  L  But despite all this, we’re still very appreciative of all that the maternity ward did for us.  We stay 8 nights there.  The one night that we were paying for at the local hotel was $139 plus taxes for approximately $150.  Had we spent the other 8 nights there, we would have spent over $1000 on hotel fees alone.  What a gracious gift they gave us there.  Plus the convenience of being on the maternity ward for the first week of our children’s lives is priceless.

At 12:30, I head back over to the hospital for Dexter’s next feeding and Dexter manages to make Daddy quite happy by giving a good ending to a difficult evening.  He begins to actively drink from the bottle.  He’s a little slow and inconsistent, but he actually manages to drink about 11 ml.  He’s actively drinking instead of just eating what drips into his mouth.  This is a major achievement and really makes my night.  I personally think he started drinking because Spencer started drinking earlier that evening and Dexter wanted to keep up with his brother.  Barbara suggests that Dexter was just waiting these last few days for Spencer so that they could do it together.  Either way, a really great way to turn around a hard night.

So, at this evening’s weighings, Dexter was weighed at 5 lbs, 11.2 oz.  Almost an ounce gain from yesterday (5 lbs, 10.3 oz).  Very good weight gain for one day.  Spencer weighed 6 lbs, 2.3 oz, down from 6 lbs, 5.9 oz.  But the doctor did say that he would probably lose a slight amount as he converted from NG tube feeding to PO (bottle) feeding.  The other issue is that Spencer still has two IV’s and sometimes the tubes and IV’s get onto the scale and shift the weight a little, so his weights are just a little iffy.  However, Spencer is still over birth weight (6 lbs, 0.5 oz) so that's a good thing.  Dexter is still a little under birth weight (5 lbs, 13.8 oz) but he's getting very close and he is still gaining every day.

Go, go, go boys!