NICU Week 4

Apologies in advance for this quick and thin post. Our family's four-week anniversary in the NICU passed on Friday, and with it came some news and changes, as always.

Maxwell was to be discharged on Saturday, but was delayed until Monday due to a couple breathing spells. He is eating and sleeping well and gaining weight. He is now part of the 7-pound club, coming in at 7lb 3oz as of Sunday night.

Kelly and I will keep our Helen Rossi House room at the hospital and run back and forth from the room to the NICU with Max while we still care for Olivia and August. Only inconvenient thing is Max being discharged with oxygen. He still needs a little so that he doesn't have to work so hard to breathe, and that promotes weight gain. Apparently this strategy has paid dividends for Max.

We'll be discharged with a portable apnea monitor and oxygen tank with regulator. In our more permanent residences (Helen Rossi and Burlington) UIHC Home Care will drop off 175lb oxygen tanks. The portable tank will last us about 16 hours and the larger tanks two weeks. The portable apnea monitor was spared a gory demise this morning....but more on that.

Olivia is surprising us in many ways, mostly because she is still in the isolett and feeding some through her NG tube. We certainly thought with her early progress she was a dark horse to go home first. Not to be! She is still gaining weight, and looking very good at a lean 4lb 8oz. She's just about doubled in size in four weeks! But she is taking the bottle and nursing well, so it's only a matter of time. We think she'll be in at least another week, maybe two.

Next up on the 'going home list' is August. He probably would have gone home Tuesday or Wednesday, but on Sunday night he had a short spell, which spells another five days of monitoring in the NICU! He is off of oxygen, however, which would be a huge bonus if he can stay off it when he is discharged. August is steadily gaining, and tipping the scales at 5lb 8oz. Nearly two pounds heavier than his birthweight of 3lb 9oz.

Kelly and I got our first real dose of late-night partying, baby style on Sunday. Waking up at midnight and 4am to give August and Max their favorite baby cocktail, 27kCal neosure premie formula was, to be expected, tiring.

Max is also on his home monitor, which lets out the most god-forsaken screech this side of the Mississippi. If I had had anything heavier than my shoe at the moment that thing went off, it would have been e-waste headed for the scrap pile. The alarm sounds in cases of apnea, but also when Max's leads are off, and I just about tumbled out of the mutant chair/bed I was sleeping in when the first one sounded. We'll have to check if insurance replaces accidentally damaged monitors.

So Max is officially ours as of later today, and we'll be adjusting to the new 24-hour schedule that baby ownership demands. We were actually really lucky to have had all the sleep in the previous four weeks...so it begins.

More pictures to come.