Week 38

 

The grandparents snuggling….My mom’s got Alex and his bigger than life binky and Marks dad and Karen are cuddling with Nicholas.

 

  

The boys snoozing. Nicholas in the blue cap, Alex in the brown one giving us the thumbs up!!

Finally….the VERY beginnings of the nursery coming together, we have waited a LONGGGGGG time to make this room a babies room! Just can’t wait now to actually put our babes in it!!!!!

   

I can’t think of any other way to describe this past week other than its been a BIG one, and a GOOD one for both of our boys!!! With all honesty, we have never had an entire week that things were going smoothly with both boys at the same time. I’m not even sure we’ve had more than a couple of a days in a row yet until now. Usually things are going well with one but concerns are happening simultaneously with the other and we have often felt like a ping pong going back and forth between worrying about each one. (and this is really the most exercise either of us have been getting lately so naturally we are exhausted…..)

This week, both boys have continued to increase the amount in their tube feedings slowly. Nicholas is up to 11cc’s per hour and Alex is at 7. With all the stop and starts with the feeds, the boys have never made it this far before so we anxiously look for signs that their bodies are not tolerating it but so far so good and we are soooo happy. Nicholas has decided he does not want the feeding tube to go all the way to his intestines anymore so he proceeded to pull it out again, I think this was the second or third time this week. Apparently he must have guessed that eventually the doctors would get the message and stop trying to put it back. They now have decided to “try” him with a feeding tube directly in his stomach (which is a step forward and basically means his body will have to do a little more work at digesting the formula). Mommy and Daddy understand this is a big deal and its one step closer to eventually trying a little bottle feeding. For now Alex still has his feeding tube in his intestine but we have every confidence he too will forge ahead when he’s ready.

Both boys oxygen requirements have also gone down this week. Alex is down to just needing .5 liter of oxygen flow and requiring anywhere from 23-28% oxygen (you and I breathe “room air” which is 21% oxygen) so this is fabulous!!!! We can actually visualize Alex coming off all oxygen sometime in the near future and my heart just wants to have a party with every tube we get to say good bye to!

Nicholas is making incredible gains with his oxygen too. For the first time in several weeks he was able to go lower on his oxygen and manage it very well. He is now down to 3 liters of flow and on the lowest oxygen level we’ve ever seen him need as well. In the back of my mind, I have always thought that it would be likely Nicholas would have to come home on at least some oxygen for awhile because his lungs were so premature and damaged by the high settings on the ventilator for all of those weeks and I’ve been okay with this thought. If thats the worst thing to come from this lengthy hospitalization, we can certainly handle that with no problem but now I’m starting to wonder maybe that won’t be needed afterall……these little boys continue surprise us every single day!

The other big news is that both boys graduated from their incubators this weekend and now are in “big boy” cribs. This means that they are regulating their own body temperature—again I know seems like such a little thing but it really is another accomplishment made by these little miracles and we take none of it for granted.

The best part of the whole week really was for the first time ever to be able to put the boys next to eachother for a photo op. The simplest thing but in 10 and a half weeks we had not yet been able to do that and we were thrilled to see them for the first time next to eachother. As you can see from the picture, they were pretty unfazed by the whole event and slept through the entire time but mom and dad had enough enthusiasm for the four of us!!!