Yep I’m way to into this web site. Same stuff, different look. Enjoy.

The blog archives are on the left side bar. Just click on a month and you will see all posts for those months. Old posts may screw up the formatting of the website (you’ll see what I mean). I’m crazy for his site, but not that crazy I would go in and fix every post!

It was only a matter of time before I figured out how to post videos! Here is a few seconds of Cole’s first bath: Cole’s First Bath.

The movie clip requires Windows Media Player and a decent connection. If you can’t view it, I charge $50 an hour for tech support.

“Seriously Daddy, you are sooo funny”

“Seriously Mommy, you are sooo funny!”

Tobie here: Today was the first tub baths for both babies. Babies are supposed to (it’s true!) love tub baths because being in the water reminds them of the womb. They had been getting sponge baths before today because when they were on the ventilator tubes it was not feasible to give them tub baths. Cole’s bath was first. I watched and learned the art of a tub bath. Cole loved it! Paige was next…I think she liked it too..but her pleasure wasn’t as obvious as Cole’s or maybe I hadn’t mastered giving the tub bath yet. They are going to get tub baths every three days from now on and I’m so excited to keep giving them baths, especially since they seemed to enjoy it so much and there haven’t been too many pleasurable NICU experiences for them up to now. Also Paige seemed to breathe pretty good on her own for a while. While we were getting her situated back in her bed from the bath, we just had Oxygen in front of her face (not attached at all) and she was keeping a pretty good oxygen saturation. I think this bodes good for getting her off of CPAP sooner than later. If only Cole had the same lungs!

Other than the baths…today was another great day filled with growth. Paige 2 lbs, 15 oz (wow! I don’t know where she puts it!) and Cole was at 2 lbs, 13 oz. I had cuddle time with Paige and Eric held Cole. There was lots of love going to our babies!

What a differrence a week makes. Last Thursday at this time we were headed to the NICU to give Cole moral support as he fought to stay on CPAP. Now tonight we are just chilling at home talking about how good the babies are doing.

We had our development meeting today with all the different *pists (all 7 of them). Apparently our kids rock! They are at least 1 week more advanced than your typical 24 weeker (who is now 30 weeks). They have already starting showing different mature actions that they wouldn’t expect from them for another week or so! In the coming weeks we are going to work with the babies to get bigger and stronger. Since we did have big babies (for 24 weekers mind you) who were in the top of the percentile for their birth weights, they want to get the kids back on course to their true corrected weight.

Cole’s number one priority is getting his tongue back in his mouth. Paige’s number one priority is to keep looking pretty. Apparently Paige responded perfectly to the steroids and they are very pleased with the way she is progressing. They don’t think Cole responded that well to the steroids, so more than likely if he has trouble again with breathing, they won’t be so quick to give him steroids again. There is also a very good chance that when Cole does come home, he will be on oxygen for 3 or 4 months based on his current respiratory progression. This seems more common in this day and age. I guess a few years back, babies born like ours more than likely would be on oyxgen all the way till kindergarten. The way Dr. Straylemyer put it: “We’ve come a long way in medicine”.

So all in all we were very pleased with the meeting. It helped reinforce the fact that our babies are getting better and there is an end in sight. It also helps with keeping our relationship with the staff open and direct. We have some excellent people on our team from the respiratory team (hopefully we will not be needed your services too often anymore) to our nurses. I’m sure the doctors do a good job too, but we don’t seem them that often because they are savings lives (the nerve, yes I’m kidding, we see them all the time). They have a good plan in place for tracking our progress. I’m glad we are in a very experienced NICU. They even think within a month we’ll be ready to go to the Thomas campus where they have nesting rooms. A nesting room is where we are able to actually move in with the babies and help get transitioned to our new lives. Suzan, did you do that? Has any of the other moms out there done that? Sound interesting to say the least.

To answer a few comments:
Depending on settings with your computer you will need to hit refresh to get the most current copy of the website.

Depending on the nurses that are on shift, we have certain nurses that are supposed to always be with our babies. We’ve pissed a few off because we had to choose one over another for our primary nurses. If it was up to us, we would pick multiple primary nurses per baby, but hey we don’t make the rules, we just live by them.