Progression

Today was a good day for the Bates foursome. Emily and I had a "come to Jesus" meeting about all of my worrying. After looking over scriptures that I've read hundreds of times in my life, I decided that I would try to believe them today. It was all the good stuff about the God feeding the birds of the air and Solomon in all his splendor not being able to out dress the lilies of the field. There was also a pep talk about "the peace that surpasses all understanding" that the Fort Worth PCA prayer emailers are very familiar with!!

With our new found enthusiasm, we decided to try something different on the drive to the hospital. We replaced RUF hymns and brought the tempo up a few notches with Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", Salt'n'Pepa's "Push It", and Lionel Richie's "All night long" to name a few. Surprisingly enough, this helped me have a more positive outlook on everything.

Enough about my mental preparation for our NICU visits, let me tell you about those sweet boys. Matthew is still struggling with spells of apnea, but both Emily and I have become a little more comfortable with our son not breathing for extended periods (as crazy as it sounds). Even tonight when we were leaving, the night nurse said that he hadn't had an episode for a while so she was going to take out his nasal cannula (this provides minimal help for his breathing) to see if he could handle it. They are trying to push them as hard as they can to force them to figure out this crazy breathing thing.

One thing the Dr prescribed was some caffeine for Matthew to help his brain stay alert enough to remember to breath. He confirmed that they do not give this to the baby via Mountain Dew in the IV, but rather through true medication!! This is helping him, but he still has the occasional period where he stops breathing.

Emily and I were able to feed both the boys today through a bottle. This was their first feeding that was not pumped directly into their stomach. Both boys were able to take about half of their "feeds", which was more than the nurses were expecting. They are both pretty lethargic right now which makes it hard for them to feed from a bottle. They are both taking in about 35mL of "feeds" every three hours, but are down to about 5.5 lbs. This was expected and they are thinking they will start packing on the pounds in the coming days!!

This is Emily bottle feeding Matthew

In other great news, the doctor went over Caleb's echocardiogram and the PDA (the hole in Caleb's heart) has reduced in diameter. He said there is now no reason to even monitor this anymore because he fully expects the hole to completely close in the coming weeks.


The charge nurse (head nurse on the floor) told us that both of our boys are "candidates" to move over to the progressive room. This is the room where they prepare the babies to go home. This is both good and bad news. It is good news because it shows that the nursing staff/dr's feel our babies are doing better. It is also bad news because one of the reasons they would move them is because they are running out of room on the NICU floor. One of our nurses was quoted "When there are new babies coming in and there is no room, someone has to go". That wasn't the most compelling argument for me to hear.


Even so, the nurse reassured me that they will be completely ready to move over there in a few days provided they don't regress. Everyone seems to think they are both doing great, but I will definitely feel a lot better when Matthew is finished with this apnea nonsense. As you may remember from earlier posts, babies can stay in the progression room for weeks on end so it still may be a while until we get to bring them home.


Another thing the nursing staff has ingrained into our minds is that a baby ready for the progression room tonight could be on the ventilator tomorrow morning. Everything can turn so fast, so please continue to pray for these sweet boys. We are not out of the woods yet, but I feel like we are making steps in the right direction.


To answer a few questions that people have been asking:

Caleb came first at 11:46am and Matthew came right after at 11:47am.

We have become very well versed with "wimpy white boy syndrome". Allegedly white males have the most difficult time with their development when born premature.

Here is Grandma Bates holding Caleb for the first time.

For all you Stanfords and Embertons who are wondering about this GBPQI "Grandma Blog Picture Quantity Inequality", I don't have any pictures of Georgetta with the boys on my camera to put on the blog, but will be ready to post one as soon as we get one of her!