November 30th update

Whew…what a few crazy days we have had here. Met with the doctor on Wednesday last week, signed all the papers for the new house on Thursday and then moved with a lot of help on Friday. Saturday we ran errands and unpacked a few boxes. Today however, we went to church again and then to see our little boy!!!

Ayden is doing much better then last week. His sleep apnea is occurring less and less. The good news is that his heart rate for the last little while has been at 180-190 beats per minute. This is rather high, but today when we went to see him, the heart rate was 145 beats per minute!!!! He still requires oxygen, but the nurse told me last week that this will be a requirement until he reaches about 1500 grams in weight (around 3 pounds)…Right now he is back at his birth weight of 790 grams. His feeding is going really well too…they have him on 5 milliliters every 2 hours and they are hoping to put this up today to 6 milliliter’s, grow little guy grow….

As we have not seen him since Wednesday last week, today was a bit hard, especially when it was time for us to go home. He does look a lot better though. His skin is more pink now, and he looks like his body is growing into his skin a bit better. I was not able to hold him today as his oxygen needs were really high, but I did hold his hand and rub his belly a little. You always try to look at the positives of each visit, but for some reason today I felt the distance between him and I. even though I could hold his hand, I just wanted to hold him and make it all better. Looking at him through the incubator without holding him was really hard today. But I know that he is in the best care, and hopefully next time I am there I will get to hold him on my chest.

We have another ultrasound on wednesday this week, and we are still awaiting the results of the spinal fluid as they sent it to the lab to see if there are any infections.

To finish on a lovely note…One of the nurses (and we don’t know who) put a package together for us. As soon as we saw it, we both started crying. These are things that if you had a full term baby, you would do at home, but since we are unable to partake in a lot of things right now, it was really kind of the nurse to do this for us…I will have Mark post a picture so you can see what the nurse did for us.

As always, I am very thankful for the medical team looking after Ayden, for our friends and family support and thoughts, and for the support that Mark provides to me each and every day. Some days are really hard, but Mark is always there to be my rock, he keeps me grounded and we support eachother.  Mark has been such an inspiration to me throughout our time together, but especially through this hard time. Even though everything is not always good news, he is always there to help me through it…He tries to see the positive things even when you feel like there is nothing positive to see or feel….He holds me when I need it, and loves me unconditionally and for that I am very thankful.

Have a wonderful evening, I know we will…