Tube Free, 5 lb Baby!

We hit some milestones in the past week--Weston became a real looking baby when his tube was taken out on Thursday AND he has packed on the pounds and is now above the 5 lb mark!  He is currently gaining about 2 oz a day and on full feeds plus some extra!

Here's what Weston's board looked like last Thursday--wahoo for 5 lbs, 1 oz!  

Ahh, we can now see both sides of his face!  Those red marks went away within a day.

Rocking the bottles!  He was told that he had to take a minimum of 46 mL each feeding and he has crushed that by taking an average of 50-55 each feeding and today took 70 mL three feedings in a row--can we say growth spurt?  

Happy Mom with a real baby!  :)

Funny-faced Weston!

See, BA Chalker, I do cry every now and then!

Proud Dad!

"What?!? You taking MY picture?"

Ugh!  Sleeping is such a rough way to spend most of my day!

Crib pictures

Here is Weston's new digs.  He was able to maintain his body temperature inside his old isolete without any help from the incubator portion on Friday, 20 January, and upgraded to a crib on Saturday.  He is still hooked up to the monitor for heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation.  

He seems to enjoy his new situation and sleeps quite soundly.

Here Weston is sporting a lovely outfit that was a gift from the 433rd.  Thanks!  The snaps work great to help keep the cords in place and provide easy access in case his leads move.

Weston has been doing well on his nipple feeds when he is awake.   I think it might have something to do with his sweet hat!

 Here Andrew is burping little Wes.  He is continuing to improve in his belch vocalization in training for going to the cabin soon.

The typical bottle feeding view.  The last couple days he has been nipple feeding twice in a row for us while we visit.  He has been dominating the first feeding, but takes a little coaxing to finish the second.  As he continues to eat, grow, and develop, he will have more stamina in reserve to crush all of his feedings.

When it rains, it pours!

Okay, that might be a little dramatic but we are seeing signs that KJ may be a little jealous of Weston. After going to the vet on Friday for her eye, her symptoms grew into swollen ears, bright red, splotchy skin and middle of the night vomiting sessions! Really?!? Truly, we feel bad for her and although she tries to warn us if she can, our carpets are getting a fresh cleaning before Weston comes home for sure now! They are doing X-rays (I am currently in the vet's office) to make sure that she hasn't ingested anything foreign. If not, then they will give her an antihistamine in her muscle along with anti-nausea meds to protect the carpet. I sure hope something helps because she looks so disappointed in herself when she makes a mess in the house--it is pitiful.
In Weston news, he is out of the incubator and controlling his own body heat like a champ! They are no longer limiting his food intake so now he can eat as much as he wants but as we are still battling to keep him awake to eat from a bottle; we are just happy for him to get the 42 mL that he has to get to "pass." They have scaled back to bottle feeding every other feed as he just seemed to be exhausting himself trying them all along with getting moved into a crib. Along with getting moved into a crib, he did have an "A" incident yesterday where he forgot to breathe while sleeping and the nurse had to jiggle him to remind him. Although we want Weston to eventually earn A's, doing so in the NICU is not ideal. This unfortunately means that at a minimum he will be camped out in there for another 7 days from yesterday. Andrew said he expected something like this, I did not and had to put my big girl panties on and deal. I logically get that his body is more taxed being out of the incubator, but I hate that it automatically means 7 more days for sure. He still has to bottle feed all feeds for 48 hours and although I know that was going to take some time, the 7 days just sticks in my mind--as I told Andrew, I can always hope that we will get the phone call telling us a day in the next week. The weekend has given us a turn as we can hold him whenever we want and for as long as we want now that he is in the crib and that makes our stays with him much more exciting than just being in contact with him at feeding time.
More later with pictures to show off Weston and probably KJ. I am just now leaving the vet without a puppy as they need to give her fluids and take more X-rays to be sure. Let's hope her medical day lets her know that she really doesn't need to compete with Weston on hospital stays!

Weston is wearing clothes

Weston has been progressing with his feeds and is now digesting his full amount.    Digesting more food has started to wear out little Weston, and so he doesn't nipple feed as often as he was before.  This is an expected outcome and not necessarily a set back.  The more food he digests, the quicker he'll grow, and the quicker he'll have the energy to nipple feed all the time.

Here's Weston cashing out after a feeding.  The tape across his face is there because he keeps trying to pull his feeding tuve off his face.  Kendra wanted to draw a mustache on it, but it's pretty thin tape and I didn't think we wanted him to start off his life sniffing markers.  He's wearing a hospital dinosaur outfit, but is sporting a sweet beanie-cap made especially for him by Echo (Thanks!)

The nurses are trying to ween Weston off the incubator in the isolete and prepare him to move to a crib.  This means he gets to wear clothes and gets wrapped up while still hooked up to all the monitors.  As long as he is maintaining his temperature without any additional heat from the isolete, he should be in a crib by the end of the weekend.

In the meantime, KJ has been jealous of us spending so much time at the hospital and decided her right eye should swell up and she should start itching much more than normal.  We took her to the veterinarian Friday evening and it turns out she has some sort of allergic conjunctivitis in her eyes.  Now she gets to take a benadryl and get gel drops in her eyes every 12 hours for a week to feel better.

The Good Stuff (Pictures of Weston)

Here are a few shots of Weston: 

We took this right as we were leaving on Sunday.  I think he was showing us how relaxed and ready he was for a nice nap under the tanning bed.  That, or he was making sure to evenly tan his armpits!

 

Here he is sweetly sleeping.  We think it's funny that he has already figured out how to use his hands as pillows.  Even funnier is that his dad sleeps very much like this.  Either he has figured out the pillow thing or, like his dad, he realizes this drowns out mom and her nagging!  :)

Here he is on Tuesday (1/17/12) actively paying attention to being spoken to.  When he is awake (fully awake, that is) he is very good at tracking our faces and voices. 

Still Making Progress

Weston is still making progress and is headed in the right direction.  They have been steadily increasing his food amount (he is receiving breast milk that I am pumping and keeping in the NICU) and they have also increased his nippling attempts to all feeds if he is awake.  He did very well the first few days and was taking almost every other meal through the bottle but then as his body is working to digest and do more, he is tuckering out a little more and even though he is taking more food, they are sometimes electing to feed him through the tube.  They have told us that babies at Week 34 (which he hit yesterday) tend to sleep a lot more and they become more alert and have longer wake periods when they hit Week 35 so we are anxiously awaiting that so that he will hopefully take all his food through the bottle.  We may see it before Week 35 as Weston has been described as being more "mature" than most babies his age (he obviously gets that from his mom--err, maybe a distant relative?) but we will just be happy when he hits that point!  Yesterday his IV was removed and it was so nice to see all four major limbs without a needle through them!  He has no needles just leads that measure his vitals now!  Wahoo!

Although we are used to seeing him in there, it is getting harder for us to leave him at all.  We know he is getting good care, but my impatience is certainly beginning to show and Andrew has been a wonderful rock through it all.  For those who know me well, emotions are not my best as I don't tend to show them--well, at least not the sappy emotions so Weston is certainly giving me a taste of what I have been missing at times.  I just keep reminding myself that it's not here to stay and it's probably the hormones anyways!  :)  I told Andrew the other day that I couldn't wait to have the experience of meeting him at the door with a crying baby and handing Weston off to Andrew and saying "Here!  You try!"  Sort of crazy, I know, but at least he would be home, right?

Here's a checklist of what is posted by Weston's bedside showing what he has to do:

For now, we know that we have 2 of these checked off.  He is gaining weight; he was 11 grams away from being at the "discharge weight" on Tuesday night.  And, of course, we are ready for him!  We are thinking we may see the crib stage soon as his temperature has been quite good the last few days and as he is digesting more food, he is able to work on keeping his own temperature up and thus can be in a crib and out of that hot house they have him in.  Fingers crossed that we see that soon!

I have more pictures to post but for now the computer isn't cooperating so hopefully I will get those up soon as I know you want to see more than a checklist!  :)

Weston's first week video

Videos of Weston from 10-14 Jan 2012

Weston's first week continued

Weston has high bilirubin levels, the cause of jaundice, and must undergo photo-therapy.  Bilirubin is produced when the liver breaks down old red blood cells and results in a yellow-ish coloring.  Weston has not yet turned yellow, but is very red and ruddy looking.  The photo-therapy should help prevent much of the yellow coloring, but, most importantly, help lower his bilirubin levels.

Here you can clearly see Weston's lanugo, the fine hair covering most of his body.  The mask over his face is used to protect his eyes from the bright light of the photo-therapy allowing him to sleep.

Just a fun picture of Weston's foot compared to Kendra's hand.

 Here you can see Weston's food tube.  The orange and black striped tube enters through his left nostril and feeds directly to his stomach.  He is still taking most of his meals through the tube.  Before feeding him, they will use a syringe to pull the contents of his stomach out through the tube to see if he has digested all of his last meal.  Any food remaining is referred to as "residual."  This is how they figure out if he is ready for more food.  As long as he does not have any residual, they will continue to up his meal amounts on a daily basis.  More food = more growing = come home sooner.  The feeding process is the most finicky portion of his recovery.

 Weston is hooked up to three electrodes for his heart and respiratory rate, a temperature sensor on his chest, and this oxygen saturation sensor.  Here he has it on his foot, but it moves when his IV moves.  Currently he has an IV in his foot and the O2 sat sensor on his hand.

 Here Kendra is standing outside his original "incubator."  This is one of the nicer and newer ones.  The top lifts and both sides drop entirely to provide greater access to Weston.  Weston has now inherited an older casing where the top does not come off.  He had to give up his pimp-palace for a set of quadruplets that showed up a few days after his birth.

 Weston has continued to progress with eating.  We were originally told he would not be able to nipple-feed, either from a bottle or breast, until he reached 34 weeks.  When they reference age in weeks, the doctors and nurses are referring to gestational age, not actual age.  Weston was born at 32 weeks and 6 days.  When he reached 33 weeks and 1 day, the doctor let him attempt bottle feeding twice a day based on Weston's performance with the pacifier.  Weston has done well so far and is now nipple-feeding 4 times a day.  Here are a couple of pictures of Kendra bottle feeding Weston.  He still needs a little more development before he can successfully breastfeed.

Weston's first week in pictures

Kendra mere minutes before delivering Weston.  Needless to say she wasn't happy with me taking this picture.  Take notice there are no stirrups and nothing but an IV for hydration.

 Kendra getting to hold Weston after he had his 5 minute check-out by the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) staff immediately after birth.

 

I followed Weston up to the NICU and watched as he was setup for monitoring and received an IV for nurishment.

Kendra is a superhero and was up and walking to visit Weston mere hours after giving birth.

Kendra was hooked up to an IV and given a liter of Petocin after birth.  We spent Tuesday and Wednesday night in the hospital room and visited Weston when we could.

Weston was very active when we went and visited him.  He does possess the instinct to close his hands around a finger, which is reassuring and fun.  He has a full head of hair (lucky!) and even has sideburns. He also has lanugo, a very fine hair, covering most of his body which should go away in a couple of weeks.  The red spot you see on his chest in the second picture is from a temperature sensor that was removed right before the picture.  He has since returned to a uniform color.

I got to hold Weston some during the days we were at the hospital.  In the picture below you can see an example of "Kangaroo Care."  This is a type of therapy for both baby and parents where Weston is in nothing but a diaper (still connected to the IV and monitors) and is placed directly on the bare-skinned chest of Kendra or I.  Then we wrap Weston in blankets to keep the body heat in.  This allows Weston to connect with us and provides him an opportunity to get into deep sleep, or active sleep phase, where he will do the most growing.  We didn't feel that taking a picture of Kendra doing Kangaroo-care would be appropriate for a website such as this.  

Video of Weston's First Day

How Weston Came Early (aka The Birthing Story)

Fair warning:  I am an English teacher and like words!  :)
The craziness of Weston arriving 7 weeks and a day early is a bit of a story as far as we are concerned because we are still reeling from how fast and furious it all was on Tuesday morning.  Our day started at 1:45 AM with me bolting out of bed and progressed rapidly until he was in our arms (for a minute) at 8:40 AM.  So, an hour of anticipation for each week he was early?  :)
In hindsight, my labor started on Monday morning during my 6th period class when the contractions were kicked off but I just passed them off as being tired from being on my feet all day at work.  I continued my day and even stayed about an hour after school to straighten up (which strangely enough is a rare occurrence as I usually do that in the morning for energy purposes), went to the grocery story, took the dog for a two mile walk, prepped dinner for Monday and Tuesday night and then sat down to watch the BCS national championship--maybe Weston just wanted to trump Alabama's win with his arrival!  :)  When Andrew got home, I told him that my lower back was aching and that it was sort of rhythmic.  We did our typical internet research of "Is this normal?" and actually found that my symptoms were signs of preterm labor.  While deciding whether to call or not, we questioned if we were being the crazy pregnant couple (would hate to be labeled that, right?), but decided to call Labor and Delivery anyway.  They directed me to drink more water as dehydration can cause preterm labor and to take two tylenol and if I was still worried, I could call back.  So, I did as directed, and went to sleep just fine....until 1:45 when I was bolted out of my bed as my body decided to gush water!
I yelled at Andrew to get up and call Labor and Delivery as my water had broken.  I think he was a little miffed by this but like a good sleepy husband followed directions.  They told us to come in and be there when we could--it's a 20 minute drive but we had to sort of pack first.  Thank goodness that my friend Sadie had sat down with me two weekends previously and listed out things that I would need, Andrew would need and then that baby would need.  And, as I had just typed that list into an email for Andrew and I both on Monday night--seriously, timing was on my side for that one--Andrew looked at the list and grabbed what we had which of course was not everything but it was something.  Then, we had the dog to "worry" about.  We had just begun talking about who we were going to put on KJ duty when I went into labor--it's a lot to ask someone to take care of (at the time what would have been) your 6.5 month old puppy when you are thinking about having a baby, we thought.  Well, no need to plan because our friend Dave was staying with us and so I just walked (probably more waddled) to Dave's room and plopped the dog and her bed in his room saying my water had broke.  Like a good friend, Dave sat up and said "What?!? Congratulations!"  We felt good about leaving KJ in Dave's care and at least he knew her craziness level as he had been with us since the Wednesday before and had almost a week of KJ fun!
We finally left the house around 2:15 and made our way to the base hospital where I checked in and they promptly told me that if I was indeed in labor that I would have be transferred to a hospital downtown as they can't deliver babies under 34 weeks (I was 32 weeks and 6 days).  I don't remember this freaking me out because, well, I think I was just rolling with the punches at this point because I certainly wasn't expecting to be at their door at this time anyways.  Indeed, it was the amniotic fluid that was gushing out of me and so they made arrangements for me to be transferred to Sunrise Children's Hospital in downtown Las Vegas but in the meantime they gave me some Magnesium to try and slow down the labor (it can apparently slow down labor for 24-48 hours and thus give the baby some more time) and they also gave me a steroid shot for the baby's lungs if we were able to get any more time.  Well, needless to say, the Magnesium didn't work and as they were putting me in the ambulance and Andrew was following in the car, I was having contractions (manageable at this point) and I think that's when I realized we would be having a baby that morning.
The EMT chatted nicely with me--his brother in law is a Marine in Okinawa--he really likes Vegas because of the weather--you know normal, having a baby conversations stuff.  I also emailed my principal from my phone at this point so she would know what was going on--it was a good distraction from all that was going on, I must say.  I could see Andrew for a little bit but then I couldn't see him any longer behind us because as good parents-to-be, we had a car without any gas and so he had to pump gas on his way downtown!  We arrived at Sunrise Hospital and it was all very surreal.  Andrew called our parents to tell them what was going on and I just sort of rolled with the contractions.  Now, even though it was early, we had discussed ideas of birth plans and actually had requested some from our friends.  We had two printed out and hastily grabbed those on our way out the door.  In realizing that I was in labor, Andrew scratched our friends' names out and we just started highlighting what we liked about the plans and were planning to hand that over.  We were sort of ready for that, you could say.  We told the nurses at Sunrise that we had that but somehow it never got handed over because I quickly realized that our goal of a natural birth plan seemed really scary and difficult without the mental preparation (I had imagined mentally psyching myself up like before I attempt a really long run or race, but being that I didn't have the time, I was questioning my ability.)  Andrew, though, had actually read his portions of the book (I hadn't gotten there yet) and so he was ready and wonderfully encouraging but then also promptly asked for the Epidural man when I said I was going to need him.  That was probably about 6:15 or so and they said they would check my blood work and I could have one.  Um, around 7:30 when they were actually moving me into the delivery room, I think the reality that I was going all natural was setting in--the Epidural man was working on a C-section and they said it would be 30 minutes.  Even though I had no concept of time, I was pretty sure that my mental psych up game was going to have to happen whether I wanted it to or not.  By the time we were in the delivery room, I was in full pained contractions mode and as Andrew describes, really working the constipated moose look--lovely, but at least it was a nature reference, right?  When I was ready to push, I told the nurse and she actually had to ask me to hold off for two contractions as they couldn't locate the doctor.  I think Andrew was a little upset at this but I didn't have the energy and just tried to follow her "blow out candles" directive.  When the doctor arrived he asked where the stirrups were in the room--those of us in the room had already realized that there were none and thus he got a disapproving look from most--and since there were none, we improvised and I gave birth in two contractions on my left side.  Weston (who actually was still unnamed at that point) came out screaming, flailing and as far as Andrew and I were concerned, looking like a normal, albeit tiny, goopy baby.  They immediately took him and checked him out right there in the room and the NICU doctor actually stepped back and said, "I never give preemie babies 9s but he's getting 9s [on the newborn baby Apgar test.]"  They did allow me to hold Weston for a minute and we got a few pictures but otherwise they whisked him off to the NICU for more checks.  Andrew followed the baby up to NICU and they finished with me in the delivery room.  The doctor and I discussed the school system and what not while we finished up and I think I started to realize that I had just given birth.  It was still very surreal (and actually continued to be most of the day).
When Andrew returned to me and was able to report that the baby was doing well (and share his measurements), I still had to hang out a bit longer so he went and got breakfast in the cafeteria--I had been starving through all of this process, by the way--and so we chowed down in the delivery room before they took me upstairs to postpartum.
Once they dropped me off, we walked down to the NICU and got to see the baby.  He was still unnamed and you can even hear the NICU nurses giving us a hard time.  Seeing him was still very surreal as he was already hooked up to monitors and under an incubator.  I wasn't very upset, just happy to see him moving and looking good.  The nurses were very encouraging and so we just sort of stepped into this world of having a NICU baby pretty quickly but we were okay with it and felt good about his care. 
Videos, pictures and updates to follow.

Trying out this blog thing to keep everyone updated!

As we are realizing the road that we are on with Weston, we have decided to keep a blog.  I considered doing this during our pregnancy so that I wouldn't overload Facebook land with too much gushy, gushy parental moments but just never got around to it.  So, now that Weston has made his early arrival and is going to need some extra attention, we have chosen to keep everyone updated on here rather than overwhelming Facebook with it all.  We will follow this post with a description of how all of the excitement occurred 7 weeks early and of course what has happened since Weston Turner Stolee joined our family on Tuesday, January 10th at 8:40 am weighing in at 4 lbs, 7 oz and measuring 17 inches.