One home, two to go!

Wow, so much as happened since my last update I don't even know where to start. Actually, lets start with the fact that we have one baby girl who is home with us and we are ecstatic. When we found out she could come home, it was after a not so good night with Mickey , so it helped us feel a little better, even though we still had concerns for Mickey, we were relieved to have one less baby to say goodbye to when we left the NICU at night. She is doing great at home. She is still on a schedule every three hours and that has made it a fairly easy transition. Tommy and I take turns at night so we each get about 4-5 hour stretch of sleep at least once without interruption. I know this will change when the other two are here. Feedings will take more like an hour and half instead of 30 minutes when we wake up. Georgia so far (fingers crossed) is not a crier. she makes lots of squeaks and groans when she is awake and even when she is asleep but not a lot of crying. Does that come later? The dogs are curious but no major issues yet. Of course we are keeping her well off the ground level. I don't quite trust them yet with her in the bouncer. Georgia had her first doctor appointment today and I am happy to say even after two days at home she is still gaining weight and is now 4 pounds, 14 ounces!

Jolynne is doing good too. She is stable, still practicing nipple feeding twice a day but otherwise she is still getting most of her nutrients and fat through a feeding tube. She now weighs 3 pounds, 15 ounces. Her surgery is scheduled for next Friday, when they will put her intestines back together. Recovery we are praying will go smoothly and hopefully she will only be back on the ventilator a couple days. Then she can start to try and eat again, slowly.

Mickey and Jolynne now have the connecting rooms now that Georgia is home which makes it nice for us when we are there. Mickey is the one who keeps me up at night with worry, or maybe its the phone calls from the doctors in the wee hours of the morning saying he had another "episode". We have tried to take him off the C-Pap so many times, and he will do great for 12 hours or more and then suddenly he will stop breathing and they have to bag mask him, or push air into his lungs manually to get him to start again. That's when the doctor on duty decides, put him back on C-Pap. Then the next day, he looks great, low oxygen, lots of energy and so he goes back to high flow nasal cannula, and then we leave, he has another "episode" and back on C-Pap he goes. This has happened at least three - four times back and forth the last 5 days. I am starting to lose count. The fact is his oxygen requirements are lower than a week ago, and his pressure settings are lower, and he is not working so hard to breath as he was a week ago, but then he has these isolated incidents that set him back again and it has left all of us, including the doctors and nurses kind of at a loss. Is it respiratory related at all, or is it something serious like another infection, or is it reflux? This has led to many long drawn out conversations between me and the doctors this week. If they don't think it is respiratory and that it is reflux, and he has even had an episode on C-Pap, then why do they throw him back on C-Pap every time it happens? Is C-pap really the answer? No one knows. So, today he is back on nasal cannula and we are just hoping to get through the night without any phone calls from the hospital. The doctors have said I ask very good questions on more than one occasion, logical questions ( I guess some parents just listen and and nod? I know so much now I swear I come up with ideas they didn't think of) and then they ask me what I do for a living, and so I tell them Human Resources, and then they look at me funny and confused, and I take that to mean they don't think people in Human Resources are very logical... : )

All joking aside, we are praying he will grow out of this and start to take steps forward. Until he can breathe better, he cant learn to eat on his own. So, our little Georgia is home, but we have a very fragile boy who is still fighting to breathe and another little girl facing a very big surgery next week. Please pray for them and for Tommy and I that we don't let the NICU and the constant up and downs get the best of us. Having Georgia home helps.

I posted this last picture on face book but I will post here as well. Santa visited the NICU on Tuesday. He is a retired NICU nurse and a very nice man who looked like the real Santa Claus :-). It was an ordeal getting all three babies together, Georgia was wide awake and easily mobile, Jolynne did not want to wake up and had to stay close to her isolate due to her IV's and Mickey had some trouble breathing so it was a quick picture and they were back apart again but not before I shed a few tears of happiness in seeing them together for the first time in their lives and in mine.

P.S. We are still looking for a nanny if you know someone who may be interested. Every time we think we found someone we like, it falls through for one reason or another. I don't understand how I can recruit people for all kinds of positions at work, yet I can't find someone (qualified) to take care of three adorable babies for 8 hours a day?