Well...as you can tell from my lack of updates, I have been a little busy lately. I know you all are thinking "if you think you are busy with one, just wait till all 3 get home!". One of the reasons I have stayed so busy is the daily commutes back and forth to the hospital to see Kate and Brooks. Thankfully, I have a wonderful mother and mother in law who have kept Braden for us to allow us to see the other 2, but it sure has been tiring.
Braden is doing great at home and slowly adjusting to his life outside of the NICU. I have been overly cautious with him, so he has not left the house except for one trip to MD and one trip to his Pops and Losi's house (about 1 mile down the road). He is a very sweet baby, who thankfully really only cries if something is wrong (hungry, dirty, etc). He has had his days and nights confused, but we are working on keeping him up more during the day to help him sleep better at night. I am so thankful to have this sweet baby at home with me!
Brooks is also doing great and gaining wt like a champ! As of last night, he weighed 3lbs 4 oz and has been gaining 0.5-1 ounce almost everyday for the past week. As we have said all along he is a fighter and I truly believe will be able to come home soon. He is taking bottles at every feeding now and is regulating his body temp in incubator. He will have to be able to regulate his body temp in an open crib (which he will be able to go to when he reaches 4lbs) prior to coming home. He is finally starting to fill out and actually looks a lot more like Braden than I ever realized.
Sweet Kate has had a rough week. As you know, I was planning to bring her home with Braden last week, however due to high bilirubin levels, MD decided to keep her a few more days. Well, that "few days" has turned into 1.5 weeks. They were able to get her bilirubin levels down, but noticed that her blood count was low. MD said they wanted to watch it for a few days and if it continued to to drop, they were going to transfuse her (it is normal for premie babies to need blood transfusions). While they were watching her blood levels, we began noticing her belly appeared to be distended. It had actually been distended for a few days, but we kept brushing it off as gas. We got another new MD this week (they change every week in NICU) who really did not like the appearance of her belly. This MD decided to go through with the transfusion and put her on Pedialyte for a couple of days to see if this helped her belly. Kate finished the transfusion last night and her blood work this morning was good. Her bilirubin levels have come up a little again, but this MD does not seem concerned with them at this time. MD told me this morning that if her belly remains soft and her blood count/bili levels are good in a couple of days, she could come home. So....I am still hoping to have her home for Christmas.
All this being said, we have been so blessed this year and are so lucky to have 3 beautiful healthy babies. I did not get around to sending out Christmas cards this year, but I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment