The look he was given right here is hilarious. I am not sure if it was because mom was kissing him or i was taking his picture, who knows, but it was a great photo either way.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and for the many people who have messaged me with plans to help out. We did receive help, majority of which was from our family but we have caught up many of the task that needed to be completed. I actually posted my stressed out post on Friday, ended up making a trip to Lowes to buy what items we needed to complete Calen's room and then was just going to wait for my next day off in order to work on it. Well I ended up getting off work on Saturday which worked out great as I had purchased everything I needed for his room and now I had a day to do it. Holly and I both did not go to the hospital to see Calen on Saturday and we worked all day with our Aunt and cousins and by the end of the night we had a completed room. It was so exciting to have this project completed and probably not to much of a moment to soon. As for the mowing deal, we got that done too. Family member came out and mowed the lawn today and tonight I actually fully completed repairs on my mower and so I can mow again myself, yeah for that, I actually forgot how nice cut grass is, it was a pleasant site to come home to. I have a team already lined up to work on the roof issue. Normally lots of people would be needed to work on a roof, however, our roof is fine except for 1 sections which is probably about 8 foot wide, 8 foot long, that is all that we are going to be replacing, so at this point I have plenty of help with that. My car's are also not a problem any longer, luckily when we bought the tires last Monday we bought insurance on all 4 tires, so we got a brand new one for free, that was very awesome.
This is his room, it still needs a couple more pieces of trim board which I plan to pick up tomorrow when I am returning a bunch of stuff I don't need anymore, and then we need to just put the changing table and what not in it, then it should be ready for him.
4 lbs 11.75 ounces
Weight is doing well, he is really right on target. Progressing quickly to that 5 pound mark, not that it matter's to going home, I just like the idea of every pound he gains. His overall weight gains though means that he has much more energy, is much more able to stay awake for important task such as eating with breast feeding or bottle feeding. Holly bottle feed him today and he drank half of the breast milk, which was 20 ml, they have recently increased his volume to 40 ml every 3 hours. He making strides in his eating patterns, just need to work a little more with him.
Holly holding Calen up over by the window. He had just eaten and she was working on burping him.
Holly was not nearly making the breast milk to keep up with his needs though. She had started to take some herbal supplements which really have had no real effect on her production volume. She talked with her OBGYN and was started on Regalen. The Regalen has created some unwanted side effects to Holly, such as making her arms feel very heavy and tingly, she says she feels like she needs to punch something ( I do keep an eye on her when she is next to me), but worst part is that she becomes extremely tired, almost incapacitating. We hadn't seen any changes in her breast milk production for a week and then today I was like well it's not helping and you feel terrible, so stop taking it, all of a sudden she pumps this morning and gets over double her normal supply, it was like crazy. The trend didn't continue through he day though, so we talked to the doctor about making some changes and he said we could continue and stop in 1 week or just decrease her dose while she is on it, so we are moving to 5 mg twice a day, during awake hours and then taking 15 mg at night prior to bed. We shall see how it goes with some more time. Holly's health otherwise is fabulous, her blood pressure's have been perfect and things are all well.
Calen looking pretty sleepy. He did have an eye exam today and his eyes are stable. They stage him actually as great ad maturing normally, w have learned though that depending on which ophthalmologist comes in dictates how well his eyes are, they all have a different opinion, it's very interesting.
Calen has made it into a crib, it is really cute. His room is so much larger to now that they have removed everything from it, no more feeding pumps, IV poles, isoletts, just a little crib and him. Temperature wise he is doing fantastic, after being out for 2 days in the crib and with the room temperature set to 75 degree's he is still holding temperature's of 99 degrees.
So external swelling is much better, they had him on Lasix 1 time a day though for some time, yesterday they have increased him back to twice a day Lasix because he is experiencing some pulmonary edema. The fluid on his lungs does make him require more oxygen which they are mixing to 30% on non high flow oxygen, but with that he does really well. As far as I understand at this point, the pulmonary edema is being caused by some immature lungs and other constrictive lung issues, I hope this is true because the lungs have a solid 7 years to mature and fix all there own problems, if it is being contributed because the heart then um that doesn't really repair it self, so please pray that there is no problems with his heart and that we are only dealing with some minor lung issues. This Lasix ordeal though has it's own set of problems, particularly that it depletes his electrolytes, potassium can be severely depleted and cause heart problems (they have him on a potassium supplement) and it can leach calcium from the bones, as they don't have enough in there blood to prevent the body from using the bones supply to maintain blood levels. This will likely slow development of his bones, keep them kinda soft for some extra time, probably no super long term effects though. The nurse today said that if a baby goes home on Lasix they sometimes are on it for up to a year, that is a long time so let's pray for a quick run on the medications.
Altogether we know that we are moving in the right direction. Home will be here before we know it. I cannot wait for the day so that we can start the experience with the comfort of our own home. Thanks for sticking with us all this time, it means a lot knowing that so many people are keeping up with the journey and most of all praying.
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