Baby Update #1

Peanut was born on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 8:57 am via c-section. He weighed 5lbs 4ozs and was 17" long. He has beautiful blue eyes and a head full of very blonde hair.

Peanut's issue is that he was born at only 32weeks 6days gestation so he is in NICU.

He does seem to be doing well but has started to develop the "typical" preemie issues one would expect to find at this gestation. He is being tube fed and does have reflux. This causes bradycardia (shallow breathing or forgetting to breathe) which is common for this age. They have started to give him medication for the reflux in hopes that it will help with the episodes as well as get him to start gaining weight.

He has two IVs right now, one in his head and the other in his foot. He is getting all of his nutrition through these two spots. They have two because they don't want to 'blow' either one. So when one looks like it's getting stressed they use the other IV site

As of this morning (Mon April 28) his bilirubin is also up so they are going to be putting him under the lights for the jaundice today. Unfortunately he has lost some weight and as of this morning he weighs 4lbs 15ozs

There is some good news. You should see this kid suck a pacifier! We can't believe he can keep that soothie in his mouth like that! So the hope is that since he's so good with the pacifier that he will take off once it's time to start feeding him with a bottle. The other "good" thing if you want to call it that is that these are the typical issues one would expect for a 32-33 weeker. We're not dealing with any life threatening complications and everything that is "wrong" is going to get better with time and hopefully a little quicker with medical intervention.

Last we heard they were planning on starting the bottle feeds closer to 34 weeks. We've been told that the suck/swallow reflex doesn't typically develop until then and if they try sooner, even if he can do it, it would likely mean he'd be working harder for his food and that could make his volume drop which could mean weight loss. So hopefully by the end of the week they'll be able to start trying bottle feeds so he can get rid of the feeding tube.

We're sad that Little Man can't meet his baby brother until he comes home but we also completely understand the policies for NICU. I'm being discharged this morning and it's completely bittersweet. We absolutely hate leaving Peanut behind but we know he's in great hands. At least Little Man can finally have his mommy back after 2 months of bed rest and complications.

We also have other great news about Little Man -- he's eating!! He's actually taking real bites from food and chewing them. Oh words can't begin to explain how happy we are about that!

BTW: We'll be keeping all of the pictures updated online so email me if you need the link.

Thank you to everyone that has been praying for our family and if you have any questions for us, please don't hesitate to ask!