Chasing Babies » 2006

How Paige Got Her Smile Back

June 30th, 2006 4 comments...sweet!

Tobie here: In case you didn’t read the title…Paige found her smile today…..soooo cute!

Eric here: Well that was all Tobie was able to get out before the babies demanded her attention. Let’s see. Today didn’t start off too great. We found Cole had ripped out his O2. He was probably without his O2 for about 3-4 hours between feeds. Honestly, he looked and acted like crap. I can’t believe his lungs are not mature enough to go without O2 for a few hours. Once we got the O2 strapped back on, he slowly came back around to old Cole. I’m a little frustrated his lungs are not progressing at a better pace. But, when we left the NICU, everyone was under the impression he would be on O2 for at least 6 months. Right now, they are on the money with that assessment. So were are supposed to start keeping track of Cole’s input, with the O2 mishap he didn’t get off to a rocking start on feeding, but he finished the day strong.

The babies are crazy needy nowadays. It’s like a little switch went off. The swings and bouncy chairs are not cutting it anymore. They need lovin and holding, otherwise they become inconsolable! It is so hard for Tobie to cater to both babies during the day. They have her running ragged. It seems like they are using some mind telepathy:
Paige: Okay Cole I’m going to cry. When mommy is done comforting me and walks away, you cry.
Cole: No problem sis. Should I poop my pants for the trifecta? Ready?
Paige: No, you don’t need to do that.
Cole: But I wannnnaaaaaaa….wahhhhhahhhhhhhahhh
Paige: Noooo, you are crying too early, abort, abort!

Luckily I talked to Grandma Pusko (that’s my mom) today and she immediately booked a ticket to come out this weekend and hold babies. She was a little upset because this trip is so short notice she didn’t have time to bring any gifts. I reminded her Babies-R-Us is right down the street, so all is well (it’s right near a Circuit City as well…hmmm…big screen tv?). Sweet!

Paige has started to smile today. It’s hard having two babies because it’s so easy to compare one to the other. Cole is doing that, why isn’t Paige? Paige is eating well, why isn’t Cole? Sometimes you have to sit back and remember they are totally different babies. Just because they came from the same belly, doesn’t mean they will act the same and develop at the same pace.

“This is sanitary, right?”
Lastly, I would like for everyone to take a moment of silence. We are officially done breast pumping. The wells of sweet nectar have run dryth. Tobie’s breasts can now become breasts again. It was a good 6.5 month run. Cole did his best to make the breast milk last by not eating as much as he should, but his doctor didn’t approve, so we are purely formula driven now!

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Eye Didn’t Do It

June 28th, 2006 5 comments...sweet!

Please, somebody get me off the roller coaster. I don’t want to ride it anymore! It’s not fun! So many ups and downs (this post is more up though, so relax)!

So we had our second opinion retinal appointment for Paige today. The prognosis is much better than the last doctor. This doctor’s opinion is much more aligned with our pediatric opthamologist’s initial observation. Paige’s right eye does have issues with scaring and some traction. Right now he doesn’t recommend surgery. We are going to follow it for the next six months (weekly appointments for the time being), but he says if it stays the same, then she will just have normal vision issues that can hopefully be corrected with glasses. If the scaring and traction do get worse, then we can talk about surgery then. I cannot tell you how much better we feel after this appointment. That other doctor had us writing off Paige’s sight for good. While we aren’t out of the woods yet, she has a much more positive outcome then negative one at this time. There is a good chance Paige will develop a lazy eye as well. The doctor told us that most people who have a lazy eyes, do not have the correct neural pathways to operate that eye, and the eye looks anatomically correct. That’s so weird. He said there is a window of time where the brain and eye work together to figure things out, if you do not try to correct that behavior during that window, most of the time you will be SOL. So I’m sure we are going to work with some people to make sure that doesn’t happen.

We also had a peed appointment today. We think Paige’s behavior is somehow related to her clogged tear ducts (with a touch of colic of course). I don’t think we have mentioned that before. It’s a common issue in many babies (full-term even!). We are going to give her some new antibiotics for her eyes, so hopefully she won’t want to rub anymore. Both kids right now have crazy scratches all over their faces. Their nails grow back so quick (just like Homer, weird). Cole had some blood work up done. He might be anemic. Well find out soon. He also lost weight for the first time. All the diuretics we have given him has probably brought him down to his true non-fluid-retaining weight. He is now a full pound behind Paige, hanging in there at 9 pounds 12 ounces. We are going to start keeping track of his daily input to make sure he is getting the right number of calories each day. After a week, we’ll meet with the doctor again, if Cole isn’t hitting his targets, we will talk about supplementing his diet (steroids, supplements, diuretics, this kid is a body building machine!).

Posted in: About

Quick Update

June 26th, 2006 2 comments...sweet!

Is it me, or is Cole always posing for pictures now?

Why does it always look like Cole is on the go?

Quick Update: We called around today for a new eye doc. We talked to someone at the center for blindness and the NICU. The same doctor’s name came back both times. Luckily we were able to get an appointment this Wednesday with him. After talking to someone at the center for blindness, it seems more than ever Paige has eye issues. She is definitely showing classic signs of vision impairment. He was even shocked that the last eye doctor didn’t want to see us for 2 months. He said with Paige’s condition we should probably be seen once a week for the immediate future. I think that justifies our mixed feelings about our first couple eye exams. While I don’t think Paige’s diagnosis will change on Wednesday, we hopefully will get more concrete answers that will help us better manage expectations.

We also had our favorite behavioral specialist over today (okay she is our only behavioral specialist). She stayed most of the day again. . She is trying to help out as much as possible and is going to come back again next week (is it possible to deputize her as an honorary aunt?). She is absolutely fantastic with the babies and gives us much comfort when we aren’t sure about certain behaviors with the babies. She did weigh the babies on her incredibly inaccurate scale. Paige is above 11 pounds on that scale. I like to think of it as a crystal ball that predicts the babies’ future weight. Oh, we gave Cole a shot of lasik again today. I think he is falling into a pattern with that diuretic, because once a week it looks like he is retaining fluid. He also started inhalation steroids today. I was against it, but the peed said it was for the best. He won this time, but next time…muhahaha!

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Oh Snap!

June 24th, 2006 4 comments...sweet!

The many faces of Cole

“Blue Steel”

“Ferrari”

“Le Tigra”

“Can’t drop Magnum on you yet.
You gotta tame the beast before you let it out of its cage.”

“Who cares about Cole anyway? The boy has only one look for heaven’s sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They’re the same face! Doesn’t anybody notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”

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My Precious

June 24th, 2006 3 comments...sweet!

This is normal, right?

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The Eyes Have It

June 23rd, 2006 6 comments...sweet!

“He opened my eyes with his fingers just like this”

Longest eye appointment ever! 3 hours, for a 5 minute diagnosis. Well if we had to sit through it, so do you!

So the building the eye doctor is questionable looking at best. All of the doctors we have been to so far, have relatively new offices, this office had definitely been around for a while (shouldn’t a top doctor be in a top notch office to feed his ego? Maybe he is just a tightwad. just kidding). Walking into the front lobby there are lots of old people with eye patches. I felt like we had just rolled into some out of the way town that you would find in a Steven King book. Of course there is one little girl in the whole place and she makes a bee-line for the babies. Hands off sweetie! We were sitting for about an hour before someone from the office approached us and said due to the large number of eye surgeries the previous day, all the follow-up appointments will take precedence. (son of a gun, I can’t tell you how naked we felt with the babies in that place with all these sick people. Okay, I don’t know if they were sick, but they looked sick).

So we are about an hour into the appointment with no end in site. People are checking in and being seen before us. We only brought enough food for one feed. Uh oh. Both babies are hungry and there is no warm water to warm up the formula (we have to keep the formula cold when we make it because the thickener doesn’t work well with room temp water). Paige doesn’t care, she says feed me, so she gets kind of cold formula. Sorry princess. Everyone that walks by thinks seeing two babies is a novelty. What, have you never seen babies before? Oh, just never two at once, gotcha. Anyways, some very old lady comes over and starts talking to me while I’m trying to comfort Paige. Not sure what she is saying, but I smile and nod like I’m a Russian tourist fresh off the boat visiting the USA.

About another 1/2 hour goes by and the door to the outside opens up. It’s a woman in a wheelchair. Wait a minute, that’s the mom of the 24 weeker who was across the pod from us at McDowell who was later transfered to Childrens with us. Look one of her older daughters is holding Faith! Wow small world. Tobie asks what she was doing there. The news wasn’t good. Her 24 weeker had just been discharged last week from the hospital and she went to her first eye appointment today (with the same doctor we have). He told them to immediately come to this office and have eye surgery. Wow, how scary is this?

Well a diaper change and two bottles later we were finally brought into a room to get Paige’s eye drops. We have to wait about 1/2 hour for them to take effect before we were finally able to see the doctor. The doctor comes by to where we were sitting in the back of the office. Tobie was holding Cole and Paige was in the stroller. The doctor asks if the little guy is ready. He must have said little guy about 3 times before I said “Actually Paige is a girl”. So when he was examining Paige, she wouldn’t lie still so he had to use the stirrups that hold her eyes open. Have you ever seen any sci-fi movie where they use these metal devices to keep unwilling subjects eyes open? That is what it looked like. In fact she kind of looked like a cupie doll because her eyes were propped open and she couldn’t blink. So sad.

So onto the diagnosis. What did he see? Well she has some retinal traction in both eyes. What does that mean? Not sure yet. He wants to see us in a month to follow up. He really didn’t answer our questions because he just doesn’t know and since Paige can’t tell us herself, we have to wait and see. He doesn’t know how bad it will be. But from the impression we got from him, it’s bad and it’s just a matter of how bad. Will she be able to see? Probably. Will she have decent vision? Probably not. Will she be able to read? Not sure. What about play sports? Doubtful. Will she have another eye surgery? Probably not unless the retina detaches from the traction. Can’t she where corrective lenses? Won’t make a difference in this case. Needless to say, we are going to make another appointment with a different doctor since this Retina doctor told us something different than our opthamologist.

So we are left in limbo land once again (didn’t we leave this no decision land not too long ago?). It’s hard to get excited about the future when you know you have this dark cloud hanging over your head. It just seems we can’t escape the aftermath of the NICU. What’s next, the titanium bands that closed their PDAs fall off? Yeah I’m venting and being silly. There I’m done.

P.S. Uncle Greg (not Gemson), Homer has an appointment tomorrow at the vet to get his nails trimmed. You can get a good nights sleep now.

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The pics keep on coming

June 22nd, 2006 1 comment...cool!

Ancient stuffed animal ritual or a sign from aliens?
Discuss among yourselves.

When stuffed animals go bad!
or
Our version of Where’s Waldo

Paige phone home

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Pic-O-Rama

June 22nd, 2006 2 comments...sweet!

Cole: “Poor little bugger, I salute you”
[said in his best Austin Power's voice]

Oh how quickly things change

Cole: “How do you get your hair to stand up like that?”

Look at those chubby feet!

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Developing just fine

June 21st, 2006 2 comments...sweet!

Here is a video of Cole. It takes a very long time to load, so go grab a coffee or something.

Tobie here:

Okay..only have a moment while the babies are sleeping off breakfast. Wanted to send an update since it’s been a couple of days. So this weekend was a disaster. Again my body does not understand why it is awake and working in the middle of the night. 3rd shift is the most ideal work schedule for our family right now, but it is killing me. I had trouble figuring out when to sleep (or getting the opportunity) again this weekend so I was down all day Monday to the point where my head was exploding and I was vomiting if I moved an inch. Needless to say this affected Eric going to work as I was in no condition to watch the babies. If it came down to me staying home from work or Eric staying home from work, I’d much rather stay home but the problem is that I don’t get affected from work until after my work week is over.

So enough of my whining about my job killing me…we had a neurodevelopmental appointment on Monday which I was pretty apprehensive about. I feel that the babies are developing just fine..but it seems whenever I’m confident about something I get blindsighted. Well our doctor (who is fabulous) said the babies look great. She mentioned that they are getting to the stage where they are mentally bored, because their brains are going full steam, but their bodies aren’t cooperating with what their brains are capable of. Okay…Paige now decided that she wanted to help me blog so now I’m one-handed. Eric and I have to do some shopping to get them brain-stimulating toys. Physically, their motor skills look great as well, so we are extremely pleased!! The doctor also mentioned that the babies should be starting to sleep more through the night (around 5 hrs at a spurt). Both babies apparently listened closely to this fact as Paige went 7 hrs last night and Cole went 6 hrs. Yippee!!

Another note: both babies are packing in the food lately. Paige is easily woofing down 4-5oz every 3 hours…yep you read that right.

Had to leave for Peeds appt. Just got back. Both babies gained 6 oz in a week so Paige is now weighing in at 10lbs 6oz, and Cole is trailing behind her at 9lbs 14oz. Awesome!! The doctor said Cole is looking good. Recommended another dose of Lasix just to be on the safe side in case he is still retaining fluid but the doctor thought that Cole didn’t seem to be struggling as much as last week to breathe.

So if you’re wondering how I have the time to type this…I’ve started putting the babies down for an afternoon nap each day. It is painful, but I’ve been told by multiple people that this is the age that they should be having scheduled naps. My friend Gina went through this recently so I asked her for advice. She said she was told it was okay to let the babies cry for 10 minutes (no longer). I was told by a nurse that 30 minutes was acceptable. Yeah right! I’m not sure there are too many moms that would let their babies cry for 30 minutes without intervention. So I’ve been abiding by the 10 minute rule and it seems to be working in that it takes 9min 59sec of crying and then they fall asleep. The problem is that one baby will cry and wake the other one up and they seem to alternate in their dozing/crying patterns. Aagh. The saga of multiples…

Well, I think that covered everything. Gotta go before the cuties wake up! And they are soooo adorable and getting more and more fun every day!

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Father’s Day Pics

June 18th, 2006 2 comments...sweet!

Almost 7.5 weeks old

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