Bella, Gabe and Josiah

I have so many exciting things to report today, I don't even know where to start... I spent the night at the hospital with Gabe last night.  There's a pull out bed in his room, so I was able to actually spend an entire night with my baby!  That said, it is rather strange to have to do a 15 second surgical scrub every time you get up to use the bathroom...  I also had to do a two minute scrub in the middle of the night just because it had been six hours since my last two minute scrub.  That's one way to make sure that you're good and awake at 4am... Anyway, it was good to be at the hospital all night because it meant that we had multiple opportunities to work on breastfeeding.  Since he's so small (34 weeks yesterday), he doesn't wake up ready to breastfeed every single time quite yet, which makes it complicated when I'm not at the hospital all of the time.  But we decided to give it a try last night and he took 10ml on his first try!  The nurse was so im

This week is Fur Rondy. I've never been to it before and wasn't even sure what it was until this week, so I decided to go check it out today. I'm still not clear on what it originally was, but now it's a fun filled week celebrating all things Alaskan. I wandered downtown for a bit and saw the carnival and the snow carving competition, but the most exciting part was the outhouse pulling race. Only in Alaska... And your Gabe picture for the day:

I got to the hospital to see Gabe today and the nurse had him swaddled so well that I wasn't even sure where his face was... A half hour, he looked like this: The kid is an escape artist! :) Uncle Tim came by the hospital today and Gabe slept on my chest for a couple hours. It made for a pretty great day!

Good news!  The Nurse Practitioner told me that they would like all micropremies to do as well as Gabriel is doing.  At this point, all he needs to do is grow and learn to eat. He's working on the whole eating thing.  We've started non-nutritive feeding, which means that he still gets all of his food through his feeding tube, but we let him try and breastfeed and see if he can get a bit by mouth.  Yesterday he got a few drops and then he stopped and looked at me like "Whoa.  What was that???"  It was pretty funny. Gabriel was pretty fussy today.  He was supposed to be sleeping on my chest, but he kept fussing and squawking rather than sleeping.  Meanwhile, my Dad called and heard him fussing, so he wanted to talk to him.  I gave Gabe the phone and he calmed right down.  I'd say that it was a fluke, but it happened three times.  Apparently he just wanted to talk to Grandpa!

This is on the wall in the NICU:

I don't have a whole lot to report tonight.  Gabe had another eye test and the doctor said he "did better than I could have possibly expected for a 23 weeker."  He's still got a few more tests over the next few weeks to make sure that his eyes are progressing as they should, but as of now, all is well. Several people have asked me what needs to happen before we can get out of here.  Basically, there are three things.  Gabriel needs to be able to breath on his own, take all of his food by mouth and maintain his own temperature.  He's now breathing on his own, so we have one step down!  As soon as he hits 1800 grams (about 4lbs) they'll put him in an open crib rather than an incubator and we'll see how he does maintaining his own temperature.  Then all we have left is eating.  We've started letting him play around with it a bit, but he's still pretty little and it takes awhile to develop the coordination to suck, breath and swallow at the same time

Today I felt like I lived at the airport... Pat and I took Laurie to the airport early this morning. We picked Phil up this afternoon and took him to the hospital to meet Gabe. Then this evening I took Pat to the airport to fly home. It's a good thing that the hospital isn't very far away... Gabe is still doing well on room air. The high flow machine is still in his room just in case they need to put him back on it, but it's looking like that's not even necessary. My baby is growing up!

Today was an exciting day! We got to the hospital to discover that they had taken Gabe off of the nasal cannula. He is now off all respitory support and just breathing  room air for the first time!!! It was also his first time wearing clothes! They are giant clothes, but that's okay. He'll grow into them. He's already up to 3lbs 8oz!

Because our lives are not exciting enough, Pat broke his foot. He's now in a cast for 6 weeks. Luckily he's not on crutches, which would make life really complicated... Gabriel continues to be doing really well. He got some snuggles with Daddy today. He's really working on this whole sucking thing, which is a good sign for breastfeeding. Hopefully we'll start working on that here soon.

Auntie Laurie came to visit! Gabe slept the whole time, although to be fair, we didn't stay very long. Laurie had a long flight and hadn't had lunch yet, so we had to leave. But we'll be back tomorrow and will get to spend some more time with him. Oh, and he pulled out his feeding tube again. It was down his nose and taped really well to his cheek and he still got it out. This kid is an escape artist... 

I don't have much to report today. Gabe is up to 3lb 4oz. If there's any doubt that he's growing, the top prints were taken on the day he was born. The bottom ones were on his two month birthday.

I have big news today! Gabriel got moved into the big kid hall! He's still in the NICU, but this is the hall for the bigger, healthier, more stable babies. We are now one step closer to getting out of  here! He still does have a feeding tube, it just got pulled out when I got him out of the incubator. He was not happy about having it put back in...

I went to the hospital today and Gabe was wide awake in his incubator, looking around and talking. It was pretty cute! He had his first eye test today and he passed with flying colors. He didn't even have a hint of ROP, the retina disease that preemies often fight with, which is wonderful. They'll test him again every week for a while here, to make sure he doesn't develop it later, but he's looking good so far. It's also his 2 month birthday. Happy Birthday Little Man!

Good news for Gabe! His feeding tube has been moved to his nose! He's been doing better about not pulling it out, but now that it's in his nose it'll be even harder for him to pull out. Plus, now we can see his cute little dimple! Also, he's now wearing preemie diapers. That's up two sizes from his original little tiny ones.

Gabriel got some valentines today from his nurses. I think they like him! :) They've transitioned Gabe to bolus feeds. Up until now they've fed him over a two hour period every four hours, so the milk is going through his tube into his stomach very slowly. However, as this is not how nursing works, they had to change the process, so he's getting his food over the course of 30 minutes every three hours. He still gets the same amount of milk, it's just coming in bigger intervals. His stomach is handling it really well and he's now one step closer to eating by mouth! He got a new bed today too. Actually, it's an old bed. They've had an influx of new babies who are all littler or sicker than Gabe, so they needed to give his new fancy bed to one of the babies that needs it worse. Since he's doing so well, they're comfortable putting him in one of the older style beds. I'm fine with it since it wasn't too long ago that he was one of the little tiny

Today was a very exciting day! First of all, Gabriel hit 3 pounds today! It's such a big milestone! Secondly, my parents and Uncle Tim all came to visit. I think Gabe was a bit confused at first about which person was Grandpa and which was Uncle Tim, seeing as they look alike and all... But then he got to snuggle with both Grandma and Grandpa, which helped the confusion. Both Grandma abd Grandpa thought that he was so sweet that they didn't want to put him down... After we got him all snuggled back in his bed, he decided to practice his sucking.Unfortunately, he can't keep his own pacifier in, so Grandma had to help him hold it in. She didn't seem to mind that either...

Someone no longer needs his Z-Flo! I'm not sure if I can even explain his Z-Flo, but it's this mattess-thing that he's been sleeping on that can be completely molded into any position to support Gabe's little body. They can dig a hole in it so he can sleep on his back, or make a mound in the middle so that he can curl around it while sleeping on his belly. It can then be pushed around him to give him boundaries, basically swaddling him with his mattress. It's really cool. Well, he's now big enough that he doesn't need it anymore! Now he's sleeping on his normal mattress with an extra blanket to provide boundaries. I forgot what she called the extra blanket that he has, but it basically looks like a horseshoe covered in a blanket. With this picture it doesn't look like a huge difference, but it really is. Yesterday was Day 58 since Gabe was born. There are also 58 days until his due date. That means that we're halfway there!

Gabe found his thumb today! I went in to visit and he was laying there wide awake, sucking his little thumb. It was really cute!

My little Gabriel is a miracle baby.   I don’t say that lightly, but he really shouldn’t be here right now.   He should have died three different times, all before he was actually born, but God chose to save him.   I don’t want to ever forget what God has done in his life, so I want to tell his story. I had a really good pregnancy.   I was active and I felt really good.   I had my moments of nausea or emotional craziness, but they were moments, not months of agony that so many of my friends dealt with.   Overall, it was going really well and I liked being pregnant. At 19 weeks 3 days, a Tuesday, Pat, Bella and I all went to my ultrasound to find out if we were having a boy or a girl.   The ultrasound went well, everything looked good and we found out that we were having a little boy.   At the end of the appointment, the ultrasound tech checked my cervical length and then suddenly said “I need to talk to your doctor” and ran out of the room. When the doctor came in, he expl

Gabe and I got to snuggle, also known as Kangaroo Care, today for the first time in a week! Having a baby in the NICU makes you crazy paranoid about every single sneeze or cough, so I stayed away for a few days last week and it was so nice to get to hold him again! This was also my first time holding him without the CPAP machine and it made a huge difference. For one, I only needed one other person to help me pick him up instead of two. For two, they didn't have to tape his breathing tubes to the chair to try and keep them from moving. And for three, since he doesn't have to wear the hat anymore, I got to rest my cheek on his head for the first time! Please pray for Gabe's little buddy Grace. She's in the NICU in another country, which has different NICU rules. Her parents aren't allowed to touch her at all while she's there and it's killing them not to be able to pick her up.

Gabriel has now doubled his birth rate!  No wonder the kid looks so big!  My baby is growing up! In other news, Gabe had lots of visitors today.  Pat and Bella were there (although I had to take them to the airport tonight) as well as Grammy and Grandpa Jim (Pat's parents).  We actually had to rotate who was in his room since we're not allowed to have that many people in his room at one time.  He's very popular!

This is what Gabe thought of that game. He was going for the Panthers. In other news, he's handling the nasal cannula really well. He still has some breathing episodes, but he's able to pull out of them all by himself. Plus, now that he's not wearing the hat, we get to see his cute blond hair and his ears, which are starting to curl! (The hat had made his ears a little flat...)

So many exciting things happened today! First of all, Pat and Bella came up for the weekend. Bella hadn't seen Gabriel since Christmas, when he was about half the size he is now. Secondly, I got to go back into the NICU and see my baby, which was wonderful! Thirdly, Gabe got his first real bath. Up until now he's had cotton ball baths. Today he got a sit-in-a-tub-of-water bath. He hated it. Maybe he'd like it more if I got him a rubber ducky to play with... But the really unexpected part of the day, was that they took him off of the bubble CPAP and put him on the high flow nasal cannula! This means that he doesn't have to wear the prongs or the cannulade and we can actually see what his cute little face looks like! So far, he looks like his Uncle Nathan, but we'll see how long that lasts...   If his little body doesn't tolerate the nasal canula they'll put him back on the CPAP for a bit, but I'm hoping we don't have to do that. He's much happier

I didn't go to hospital again today. I'm feeling okay, but I figured that I'd give it another day just to be on the safe side. I did talk to the nurse, though. She said that Gabe is up to 1180, which is 2lb 9oz! She also told me that last night she went in to check on him and he'd pulled out both feeding tubes and was swinging them around like a cowboy trying to lasso cattle...

Gabriel had a special visitor today, his Great Aunt Jan. She came up for the day just to meet him. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go in with her. I'm fighting a bug again. I really hope that it's just stress and that this is my body's way if dealing with everything that's going on, but to be on the safe side, I get to avoid the NICU for a few days, which is very sad. :(

The little man is still doing well.  They've moved his Bubble CPAP down to 6 and he's handling it well.  If this continues he'll be off the machine in no time!

Gabriel has been opening his eyes a lot more. He can't see a whole lot yet, but it's fun to see his eyes!

Gabriel's lungs continue to grow and develop. A week or two ago they turned his bubble CPAP down from 8 to 7 and he didn't handle it well and they had to turn it back up. Yesterday they turned it down to 7 again and it went much better. Today they were able to turn it down to 6 and so far he's doing well. There is hope that he'll get off that machine yet! Also, he got a new blanket!

I have nothing to report today.  Gabriel is doing well and we had some good snuggle time this afternoon.