Firday Night Fun

What would a Friday night be without a 3 hour visit to the NICU. I can tell you that nothing in the world could have made me happier than spending a few hours at the NICU with my wife and sons. For those of you who have been reading our blog, you know that I struggle with the constant worry that our children might stop breathing. I want to let you in on the dialogue between me and our British night nurse during our bottle feed tonight.

Frances (Night nurse) - You both are doing a great job

Tim - I want to make sure, is Matthew's head tilted at the right angle.

Frances - Yeah, you're doing fine, love.

Tim - Does his color look ok?

Frances - He's a bit purple, but he'll start breathing well soon enough.

Tim - Can you please quantify "a bit" purple?

At this point, Frances grabbed him and did some nurse magic to get his color back to "pink". After telling Emily that I wouldn't feel comfortable holding him the rest of the night, she told me that I would be sleeping on the couch unless I held Matthew immediately. I held Matthew immediately!!

At the end of the night, I had to put Matthew up because the nurse wanted to minimize the stimulation to make sure he wouldn't have a major spit up. Then Emily asked me to take a picture of her and Caleb. By the time that I grabbed the camera, she had slipped a Texas Tech hat on him. For those of you who don't know, Emily went to Texas Tech and I went to TCU. To put it in perspective, TCU and Tech have played in football twice since we've been married and for both games, I sat in the TCU section and she sat across the stadium in the Tech section. Some bonds are stronger than marriage!!

Back to the hat. I told her that I would simply not allow the first school colors on our blog to be Texas Tech. We settled on a farkle (paper, rock, scissors), best out of three series. I won the first game with a bold scissors over paper. She fought back in game two with rock over scissors. In the rubber match, she trounced me with a paper over rock. How could I have known?

Here is Caleb in that silly hat that his Mom made him wear!!

Now to the medical condition of our children...which is the reason people read this blog. The doctors have increased their bottle feeding to 3 times per day. This is great news because it is a step closer to bottle feeding 8 times a day, which is required to bring the babies home. The doctors aren't happy (but aren't worried) about Caleb's premature atrial contractions (PAC's) in his heart. This means that the ventricles aren't beating at the same speed as other parts of his heart. They are going to put him on a 24 hour heart monitoring process on Monday to better understand what is going on. This was implemented due to a visit that our doctor had with a cardiologist. The good news is that our primary neonatalogist, who has been on vacation and is returning next week, is also board certified in pediatric cardialogy. Praise the Lord!!

There has not been any significant change in their weights since they reached their low a few days ago. The nurse told us that over the period of a few days we should see weight gain in the range of 2 to 3 oz. That would indicate real weight gain and would be another sign that they are a step closer to coming home.

Also, please pray for Emily as it is getting more and more difficult to be at home without our babies. We both completely understand that this is what is best for them, but is doesn't change the fact that it is extremely difficult to be home without our kids. We miss them dearly.