Mom and Dad Heading Home and a Special Surprise Day 5

Holly and I are heading home this afternoon. She has been discharged so I feel that this is when things are going to be getting hard with travel and what not. We didn't get into the NICU until about 1:30pm today because of the discharge process and they wanted to make sure Holly had her blood pressure checked before she left because she is on an increased dose of her medication. The nurse hadn't done his assessment yet so it worked out for us and I got to do his diaper change and take his temp again today. These things seem so small but it is one of the times when you actually get to reach in the incubator and touch them so it is nice. 

His weight remains unchanged today. Hopefully here soon we will see some positive trends on this thing. I did learn that they weight him at 1200am daily so hopefully I can keep track of it everyday.

This was him and his room when we came in. His incubator was covered and lights were turned down. This was a good thing because this means that his eyes are uncovered because his bilirubin light has been removed completely. Now when we see him we will be able to see his eyes. He cannot see anything out of them, his retinas are hardly developed so from what I understand he is essentially completely blind. They said full term newborns can really only see shadows so it will be sometime before his vision becomes intact.

So today he was a little stinker. He whales his arms around a lot and takes out whatever objects that stand in his way. We were supposed to give him his 1cc of breast milk down his oral gastric (OG) tube, but if you see the orange tube in the nurses hand (her name is Karen) this would be his OG tube that he pulled out. The nurse did reinsert it and at this point we have not given him his feeding and as you read the next part you will know why we didn't give it to him yet.

Yes, you are seeing it correctly, mom is getting to hold her baby. He was still a little underweight by about 150 grams to be out without a doctors order but the doctor approved so they got everything set up and out he came. They are doing kangaroo care, skin to skin contact. He is tolerating it extremely well, his body temp quickly increased, his breathing and sats were checking out great. Of course mom's heart was racing too as she gets to hold him.

Pictures of this moment are a bit difficult to get as he has to stay on the CPAP and he has to be heavily covered up. I was able to get super close to him and his head is so tiny, I mean it is unexplainable, I never really was able to grasp the size of it until he is right there a couple inches from you. He started off a bit reluctant to sleep as he squirmed around some and was making some noises. He stared to fall right to sleep though within just a few minutes. We learned something about him though and that was he sleeps like his mother. He likes to hold his mouth open. Probably not his fault, gravity kinda effects him pretty harshly however I had to close his mouth several times and then ended up putting a towel under his chin so that it would hold his mouth shut cause when his mouth is wide open the CPAP blows all the air straight from his nose out his mouth which makes his heart rate quickly drop. Nothing a little towel couldn't fix so he is good to go. 

Mom and Calen enjoying some 1 on 1 time together. Holly gets to hold him as long as possible, well as long as he is tolerating it, which he is without any issues at this point. They have been doing it for over an hour now and Mom and baby have fallen asleep, it is so sweet. 

As long as Holly and I are still feeling good when we leave here we plan to go to outback steak house for our anniversary dinner, pretty excited about the change of pace. Then it will be off to home to reorganize things and best of all spend some time with Joey as we really miss him. Check back late of Thursday, I will not be at the hospital tomorrow because I am going back to work (at a different hospital unfortunately) so Holly will have to take over the blog entry tomorrow. Have a goodnight. Bye!