Sophia and Watson's Stories: Sorry for the delay

I guess my keeping up with the blog has not been so good. It's harder once I was discharged from the hospital because now I'm running back and forth from home to the NICU. My mom was here all week and just left yesterday. She was a gigantic help with cooking, cleaning, helping out with Sophia, and trekking to and from the hospital several times a day. Watson is doing great. He was started on oral feeds and was taking them wonderfully, but now that they have increased his feeds so much, his is starting to tire out before finishing his whole feeding. They put down an NG tube today to give him the portions of the feeding that he doesn't finish. He is up to 31cc/feeding or just over an ounce. He was also started on 10cc of Pedialyte per feeding today to help with hydration because his IV has come out and they have decided not to restart it for fluids. This is something new that they are doing at the NICU to avoid IVs in babies who are only getting fluids and nothing else via their IV. It is fine by me because I hate seeing those IVs in his little hands and the arm board looks so uncomfortable. Also, now that he doesn't have the gigantic arm board for the IV, he can wear clothes!!

His bilirubin did end up getting a little above the comfort zone and he was on the bili lights for about a day and a half. It is now down to an ok range, and they do not expect that they will have to put him back on them since he is now eating so much more. He has lost some weight and now weighs 4lbs 6ozs, which is not unexpected, but we hope the increase in feedings will get his weight trending in the right direction.

We also got moved to a new room in the NICU which is a corner room/suite! It is soooo much nicer than the cramped room we were in before. The nurse told me there had to be some perks for being an employee there! It's really nice because I'll be going back to work this week like I did for Sophia, so I'll be up in the NICU pumping several times a day and will probably spend the night there most nights since I'll have to be at the hospital by 8am anyway. I'm hoping that I'll only be back working for a week or 2, but it is a good way to save up my maternity leave days so that I can use them when he is home and needs me 24/7.

I'll try to be better about updating (hopefully daily) so that I won't have so much to say! Here are some pics from the last few days!