8-3-14 Spencer Update

Matt and I went on a date last night. We could just stop the blog post with that because that is quite a feat. What did we do? Dinner at Matt's choice of restaurant. Shopping for Stacey.  A little something sweet at the frozen yogurt joint. And then a visit to see Spencer.

I think that was the best part. Matt and I rarely get to visit Spencer at the same time any more, so it was special. What was even better, was that when I peeked into his room, I exclaimed,

"Oh my gosh, He's in a crib!"
(The nurses said they could hear me all the way down the hall)

I didn't realize that was going to be such a big deal. But it WAS. We were SO excited. Maybe it's because it's one of those things "normal" babies do. It made Spencer seem normal, and it made this whole bizarre thing feel a little more normal to us. Of course Spencer is just this little guy in this big ol' crib, but that's ok.

Then Matt was holding him and I looked over and thought,
"This looks normal. Like a newborn baby being held by his dad in the first few days of his life."

It reminded me a of a moment when Matt held Carter in those first few days. And it felt GREAT to feel normal. To have a special moment in time where we weren't thinking about all we have been through, all the worries and tears and fears, and we were just holding our swaddled baby like most parents do. Thank you Jesus.

 

Spencer had his ups and downs this past week. He is still struggling with his desats. I think we have it narrowed down to a few causes. First - his oxygen is humidified and sometimes the water drips into his nose from the tubes. Yuck. Just like you or I, he doesn't like that feeling and reacts by holding his breath for a minute. I don't blame him. But it messes up his breathing and sends off all sorts of alarms. To hopefully help with this, they felt Spencer was ready to move to "low flow" oxygen so they made the switch on Friday and hopefully that will help less condensation build up in the tubes.

 

Another reason could be that the poor guy needs to poop. He's on all sorts of fortifiers and additives and they tend to stop him up. When he gets backed up, his tummy and intestines get full and they push up on his lungs. This makes taking a big breath harder to do and inevitably leads to desat alarms. There isn't much they can do for this except wait for him to outgrow it. Good news is, overall his oxygen hovers between 21-25%, which is an improvement.

He is also working on taking milk from a bottle once a day and is currently taking about 15 cc!

 

Spencer's weight is 4 lb 15 oz - just an ounce shy of 5 pounds. Can you believe it?? The nurses were saying its very possible I could take an eight pound baby home from the hospital. My friend Ruth says she believes Spencer would have been a nine pound baby (like Carter) if he hadn't come early, so maybe he will be that big by the time we leave!

Regarding the crib - as long as Spencer can maintain his temperature without burning too many calories, he can continue to stay in the crib. If not, they will move him back to the incubator for a short period of time.

I realize many of you haven't met Spencer yet so I thought you might enjoy hearing some of his sounds. It brings him to life a little bit. Here are two videos - first one he is sucking on his paci with the hiccups. Second one he is making his grunting noises and sucking on paci. Enjoy.