Alex, almost three weeks old. And other anecdotes.

Alex continues to do fairly well with his feeds. They are still gradually increasing the amount of milk he gets, and soon he should be on a full feed of milk and able to come off the supplemental intravenous nutrients. Which means he can lose another tube soon. His digestive system works pretty slowly still, and he has been having some difficulty, um, "processing" the milk in a timely manner, but so far there have been no symptoms of injury to his miniature digestive tract. He is back to his birthweight of 2 pounds 5 ounces and has been hovering around that number for a few days. Hopefully he will start to add weight again soon.

He's been having a little bit of reflux after his feeds, with milk creeping its way back up his throat and into his nose. Whenever this happens he tends to have some apnea spells and a dips in his oxygen level, both of which cause the monitor alarms to go off and both of which seem to occur as soon as I arrive in the NICU. The nurses seem nonchalant about this and the doctors have told us not to worry about these spells but there's just no way I can stave off the panic attacks. Usually a little stimulation or repositioning of his head or a slight increase in his nasal O2 corrects the problem, but the adrenaline in my bloodstream usually last for hours afterwards. Perhaps I can talk a doc into prescribing me some valium so I can actually enjoy my visits with my son. Just kidding. (Not really.)

Last night, Kris and I finally got to go to a Phillies game again. We are partial season ticket holders but we've had to miss the past three games for obvious reasons. It was so nice to be back at the ballpark, comforted by the symmetry and routine of the game, the season just moving forward as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. There was a somber note to our enjoyment, however. A young couple who have the same season tickets just a row in front of us lit up when they saw Kris. Though they are strangers, they'd been casually getting updates on our pregnancy throughout the course of the season. The woman said "amost time, huh?" and we had to tell her we had the twins prematurely. "But they're both healthy, right?" Well, no...I explained that we lost one and the look of sadness that welled up in her eyes was crushing. I could see how much she regretted bringing it up, and I ended up trying to comfort her, oddly enough. It's ok. It's ok. We are dealing with it and our other boy is doing very well. I sort of feel like we ruined their night. Kris thought we should have just lied and said everything was fine and be done with it but I knew that we'd be seeing these people until September (October?) and I couldn't bear the thought of concocting false updates about two healthy twins for the next two months. As a couple, we are forever changed. We will always be parents who lost a child. We shouldn't hide this fact just to make a social situation easier. I really did feel bad for this nice woman, though. Thankfully, the Phils won, there was a rare inside-the-park homerun, and the game ended with fireworks. Spirits were lifted.

Fianlly, I'm happy to report that the events of the last two months have helped me to erase most of the beer belly I've been slowly working on over the past five sedentary years. Thanks to stress and the inability to eat a full meal of any sort for four weeks, I've dropped several pounds and can almost see my abs. While I'm pleased with the results, I cannot in good conscience recommend this diet to anyone.

Have a great weekend. We have a bunch of pictures to upload and hope to get to it soon.