Day 7 (GA: 29)

Nanette did not fever last night and, although she is still on some pretty serious pain medication, she is feeling better all around.  Given her improved health, she is getting discharged today!  We are considering hiring a moving van---we have accumulated a ton of stuff in the "princess suite" over the last 6 weeks.  While it is wonderful to be leaving the hospital it comes with mixed feelings.  The doctors, nurses, aids, nutritionists, and other staff have provided such excellent care and we will miss them.  In addition, we will not be sleeping a couple hallways away from the twins and have our own room to relax in when not in the NICU.  But we will get to see our other kids more often, who we miss terribly; this ordeal is starting to wear on them.

Zeke has been off his ventilator for a full day and is doing great.  The best part about no CPAP is that his face is open and visible.  He only has a feeding tube and a little nose canulla.  I took some pictures of the cute little guy. He did well with his feedings yesterday so he got bumped up to 30mL/kg/day.  For reference, he is getting a total of about 120mL/kg/day.  So if he took all his feeds and we took him off IV fluids, he would be getting 120mL/kg/day.  So although he is getting increasing amounts of his mother's milk, he has a long way to go until he is 100% on milk.

Zeke with only a feeding tube and canulla

Dad's fingers in view for size perspective.

Zeke's toes while he is getting is blood pressure checked.

Gabe continues to breath well with a little help from his ventilator friend.  But today the respiratory therapist dropped his ventilator rate down to 10 breaths/minute, so only about 1 in 6 breaths are not spontaneous.  If he follows his brother's pattern, he may be breathing entirely on his own in another day or two.  He tolerated the first day of milk feedings so he will bump up from 10 to 20mL/kg/day.