Alex Report

I felt better yesterday so I thought it would be ok to visit Alex in the NICU. I kind of forgot how tiny he is. He's been doing very well. Still off the ventilator, he is receiving only humidified room air via a nasal cannula to keep his airways open. These tiny babies have a bad habit of forgetting to breathe occasionally, which leads to a lowering of the heart rate, lots of beeps and alarms, and a stern tapping of the foot from a nurse to kickstart their lungs again. The cannula helps them to continue breathing. They tell us that he is doing pretty well with these apnea and  brady spells, but of course whenever we visit he likes to have one or two of them to keep me on my toes. Hopefully as he grows and gets stronger these will go away.

They started feeding him on Kris' milk four days ago and he seems to be tolerating it well. They start very slowly with just about 20 ccs per feeding and they will gradually increase this amount over the course of ten days to get his immature digestive system acclimated. They have to be very careful during this process because he is at risk for various kinds of injury to his digestive tract. So far, so good. The breast milk (referred to as "liquid gold" by our doctor) is so good for him. He should start to put some weight on and soon he will look more like a baby and less like a groggy salamander.

In other news: it appears now that I am a crier. I'll just go ahead and weep at the drop of a hat now. Even at good things. I was able to kangaroo with Alex yesterday ( a way of holding him skin-to skin). I opened up my shirt and they place my tiny son against me. I felt his miniature fingers trying to clutch my chest and the floodgates opened up like I was a teenage girl who just met a Jonas Brother. I mean I cried, friends. Pure love is something else; you can feel it in your veins. It is all encompassing. I had no idea.

Let's hope for more of these happy moments. Enjoy your weekends.