I Survived Rooming In... But He's Still There...

Kean is six weeks old today. Hard to believe that if you add up the six weeks I've visited him daily with the 11 weeks I stayed there-- I'm now at 17 weeks of being at St. Luke's each day. That's insane. Thankfully, I'm not. Yet.
Saturday afternoon, Kean had his car test. Basically, they buckled him in and had him sit there (all wired up to monitors) for 1 hour and 30 minutes. He passed, barely. But he passed. So check that off the hurdle list.

He looks so tiny in his car seat.

After we made it through that, we moved into our room in the NICU. My sister-in-law, Rachel sent a packet of placards with each month printed on it-- to show his growth. So I had to take a picture (since he's already 1 1/2 months). He's changing daily and what a cool way to show those changes.

Anyway, the night of rooming in was a disaster. He chose that night to have an unbelievable amount of oxygen de-sats. His alarms went off ALL NIGHT. I swear, being generous, I probably got a whopping 1 hour of sleep. So Dr. Snyder came in the next morning and told me we had 3 options: 1. room in again and see if he just had a bad night. 2. put him on medication (Caffeine) to help with his immature breathing and send him home in a few days with monitors or 3. conduct a swallow study (give him bariatric medicine and then shoot a series of x-rays that show if he is having reflux or is aspirating). I chose to go through a second night of torture-- rooming in.

Last night was a lot better. I got probably 4 hours of sleep (good practice for when he comes home, I guess). He still had his desats-- but not nearly as many. So here's the plan. They put him on Caffeine today and now have to watch him for two days. They think I'll be able to bring him home in two days-- on the medicine and on monitors-- monitors we hear sound about as lovely as a smoke alarm going off. Byron will have to figure out a way to somehow muffle the alarm. If I have three girls waking up with me each time the alarms go off-- I'll go off.

Finally, here are my two favorite NICU nurses. Dan, above, gave me the best advice yet-- to treat Kean like a regular child. If I treat him like he has Down's-- he will act more like he has Downs. Plus, he's the one who showed me how to self extract milk from my breasts. Gotta love a man so secure!

And meet Pam. She's the one who is responsible for helping us name Nathan-- Nathan. She's the nurse who had to stop from calling him Nathan before we had told her we were thinking of that name. Plus she's Kean's cuddle partner. He LOVES her and so do we!