Day 7 – Week One Down

We closed out our first week in the NICU tonight. Corin is still improving slowly. They keep lowering the level of supplemental oxygen he receives until he doesn’t seem to like it, and then they raise it back up just a bit. Once he gets used to that level, they repeat that process. They are hopeful that within a couple of days he will be off of the treatment he is on and may be able to start trying to nurse.

His jaundice levels came back up a little bit on his last blood draw. But the main way babies get ride of that is to excrete the bad stuff. And shall we say that he has been purging EXTREMELY effectively. We had a lovely little changing incident wherein I was in the process of wiping him each time I wiped he would just keep pumping more out at me. It was certainly a new experience in my life. I guess that is why it’s good that you love your kids, or else there is no way that you would put up with that kind of treatment.

Mommy and Grandma are in with Corin now, gearing up for the next meal. Our friend Tristy from California came by today with her mom to meet our little guy too.

So things are moving slowly but steadily. There are times when we feel that they are moving too slowly, but then we look back over what we have been through so far, and look at the other babies in the NICU who are much worse off. We are truly thankful for the progress we have made and for the fact that, while we are anxious to get him home, we don’t have to worry non-stop for his long term outlook.

Love ya’s!

CK&C

Day 6 – Snugglesaurus

Things are continuing to go very well with Corin. This will be his first day with all of his meals coming from mommy, and she still has some to spare, so I think that we are done with formula forever. They are slowly but steadily lowering the level of supplemental oxygen he is receiving. We haven’t heard any firm timeline for the future, we just have to wait and see each day how he improves.
He’s been wearing some pretty cute PJs in the hospital. We had to change him out of his little doggy PJs into some dinosaur PJs (which sport a “Snugglesaurus” name tag). The change was needed due to the fact that while I was changing his diaper, he decided that it was a good time to respond to nature’s call. So he peed all over his bed, clothes, chest and face in the second before we were able to adjust his field of fire. Kristi, the nurse and I were all laughing very hard at him.
He just finished having dinner and is sleeping soundly in mommy’s arms. It doesn’t get too much better than this.

Day 5 – Kisses from Grandma, Pop and Lola

Day five has been another great day of steady improvement. Corin’s temperature is holding fine, so it seems he will be done forever with the incubator. He has been digesting more and more food, more and more of which is momma’s milk. So they have been steadily increasing the amount of food that he is taking in and decreasing the amount of fluid they have been pushing in through the IV. That transition has gone so well that when we returned from our lunch break today, his IV had been removed. So now we are able to see all his hair (mostly blonde) and his whole head. It is great to see the number of wires hooked up to him slowing dropping off.

His breathing is still a little fast, but the main goal now is to slowly decrease the supplemental oxygen he is receiving (which isn’t much). Once all of his breathing issues have cleared up, we will move on to actually eating meals from a bottle or right from momma.

Kristi’s mom (Grandma) and Christian’s parents (Pop and Lola – which is Filipino for ‘grandma’) came up to visit tonight. They all got quite a treat when they saw that his IV was taken out. The big treat came when they all got their chance to sit and hold him. The rules are that only parents and grandparents can hold him, so they can keep some semblance of order in the NICU.

Mommy and Daddy are doing pretty well. We are using our lunch breaks to take care of the things we hadn’t had a chance to complete, and to get some rest. We are getting an okay amount of sleep, although Kristi still gets up several times a night to pump. Her biggest discomfort right now is the soreness associated with her milk coming in. She’s been able to give him a few meals of all breast milk, and then they supplement with formula when we are not here. Once her milk fully comes in, the goal is that she will be a full time milk-maid and will have reserves to feed him when we are not at the hospital.

Thanks so much for all of your warm wishes and thoughts. We truly feel and appreciate your love.

CK&C

Day 4 - Walking into something wonderful

Day 4 has been quite a treat. This is our first full 24 hours not having a room in the hospital, and we weren’t sure how that was going to go. But it has been working out great. We have a little schedule worked out for when we are here, and when we take our breaks at home (which is about 15 minutes from the hospital). We got to start the day off by holding him for about an hour. He slept most of that time, but it is such a great feeling to have some extended contact time with him.

His bilirubin count (which is the level they measure with jaundice) came down quite a bit, and they thought that today might be the day that he comes off of the light. He finished his course of antibiotics, so that is one less thing that they are putting into him. Because his hands kept getting puffy, they moved his IV from his hands to his forehead. That sounds so much worse than it actually is. He has less nerve endings there (and so do you) so it actually bothers him less. They also moved his feeding tube from his mouth to his nose, which also sounds a bit worse than it really is. The benefit of this for us is that his mouth is fully clear and makes him look much better.

After we took our lunch break at home, we came back in for our evening shift in the NICU. Kristi had a heart-stopping moment when we walked into the room and saw that his incubator was empty and there was no blue light shining. But this turned out to be a GREAT thing. We kept walking and right behind his incubator was a little open air crib. He was wrapped up like a little burrito and looking very good. He is also wearing his first little PJ outfit and looks SO CUTE! They said that he was actually getting a little hot in the incubator and his jaundice was looking good, so they moved him to the crib and shut the light off. As long as his temperature holds steady he should be able to stay in the crib.

We did his check, changed his diaper and then got to sit and hold him for over an hour while he ate. Kristi has been pumping away, slowly building up more and more milk. When we take our lunch break at home she pumps there and today we built up enough to have him eat almost 100% breast milk for his 5:30 pm feeding. He was awake, looking around and suffering from a little case of the hiccups. It is hard to understand how something that annoys me so much when I have them can be so ridiculously cute when he’s got them.

We just laid him down for the nursing shift change and are having some dinner in the cafeteria before heading back in to be with him. He’s still breathing a little bit fast, but without too much effort. It has been a GREAT day of progress.

Days 1, 2, and 3...

We’ve met with the head of the NICU over the past few days. He told us that with most babies Corin’s age, their condition generally drops for the first 72 hours after birth, and then rises for the next 72 hours. That has certainly held true for the first 72 hours.

Shortly after moving into the NICU, Corin still had to work too hard to keep all of his levels up. So he was put on a ventilator for about 18 hours. That is pretty scary to look at, but it had an obvious impact on the ease and quality of his breathing. He was slowly weaned off of the vent, by reducing the number of times it breathed for him and allowing him to increase the number of breaths he took for himself.

Once he was off of the vent, his oxygen levels were all looking good, but he has still been breathing a little fast and hard (although not anywhere close to as fast and as hard as he was before the vent). So he was moved from an open air bed to a little incubator to try and cut down on the stimulation he was receiving from the rest of the room. The hope was that he could relax a bit more and that would allow his breathing rate and effort to come down.

The next little drop of the first 72 hours was that he was starting to get a little jaundice (yellow tint to his skin). So while he is in the incubator they have a blue LED light over his bed. This light helps his body (in some magic way) to fight the factors which cause the jaundice. He gets to wear a little eye mask with sunglasses on it under the light, so he looks like a little junior Special Agent.

The main draw back of having him moved to the incubator, and being under the blue light is that we have to keep our touching and stimulation of him to a minimum. He gets checked and fed every three hours, so we are here for that to help with the check, to change his diaper and to feed him (he is currently feeding through a tube and will continue to do so until all of the breathing issues have been resolved). So we do get some light contact every few hours.

The first 72 hours ended wonderfully. We were able to shut the light off for about an hour and take him out of the incubator. Kristi and I sat and held him and it was indescribably wonderful. So now we are hoping that the next 72 hours truly are “recovery hours”.

Corin's Birthday

This story was written on 4/24/09...

For those of you that hadn't heard, Kristi gave birth to our son, Corin Kilpatrick. We wanted a rare name, which we got...Corin means "spear bearer", and Kilpatrick is my and my father's middle name. She was 34 weeks and 4 days along, so he was a little bit early. Here is the story of our recent past, the details of the present and the plan for the future...

It was 5:30 in the morning on April 23, 2009, when Kristi came into our bedroom (she has been sleeping in another room with a more comfortable bed for her hips) to wake me up and tell me that I needed to come look at something. We walked into the bathroom and stood over the liquid soaked piece of tissue. She said that she sat up in bed and just felt a little "WOOSH" of fluid come out. This would be the famous "water breaking". But she felt perfectly fine and we were confusing a couple things from our childbirth class, so I went back to bed and Kristi went to work. She said that she would call her doctor later in the morning.

Flash to Kristi at work, sitting at her desk when the really BIG "WOOSH" happened. As Kristi sat there, looking like someone had just thrown a bucket of water on her, she paged our doctor. The doctor, who like everyone else who has heard this story, said "You're at work?!?" She quickly pointed Kristi in the direction of the hospital. Kristi called me at home and told me "Thundercats Are Go" (you should see the very funny movie 'Juno' if you don't get that reference). I packed up the hospital bag while Kristi's boss drove her to our house.

Once I was picked up, we headed to the hospital. This was not the hospital where we took our baby classes, or where we were planning on delivering. The doctor sent us to another hospital that had a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) since he was coming a bit early. Thirty-four weeks is the cut off for when they would try to stop a delivery and when they would let it progress, since that is when the lungs can be sort of hit or miss on being done.

We got to the hospital at 8:00 am and got checked in. Kristi was checked at 8:30 am and was dilated 3cm and doing fine. She was calm and baby's vitals were looking good. At about 12:30 pm she was checked again and was 4cm and still doing well. We continued to progress well, with Kristi having contractions and breathing right through them like a champ. A little before 2:30 they checked her again and she was at 5-6cm. That is the point at which she started having SERIOUS contractions which were not so easy to breathe through. So at 2:30 she received an epidural. The nursing staff's goal at that point was to have her move along at about 1cm / hour. Kristi had her own schedule and moved much faster than that.

At about 6:00 pm they checked her and she was fully dilated and ready to push. Kristi, her mom Elaine, the nurse and I were in the room, with my mom Gayle in the waiting room. The nurse wanted her give three good pushes for each contraction she had. Kristi pushed HARD the first couple pushes. I could already see him at the doorway, waiting to come out. So the nurse said "OK, stop pushing, we're going to wait for the doctor". The doc came in, along with some specialists from the NICU, and we were set for the big moment. The doc told Kristi to push, and Kristi pushed like a CHAMP. Three pushes and his head was out, one more and the body followed right behind. At that point, those of us in the room not being paid by the hospital had our nice little teary moment.

Stats:
6:39pm
5 pounds, 14.2 oz
19.25 inches long

He gave a few good cries right away, and I cut the cord. The NICU people took him to their side of the room to have a look at him. They cleaned him up fast and he was looking nice and pick. He was having to work a little too hard to breathe, so they wanted to take him to the NICU. Kristi got to hold him for just a minute, and then I picked him up and moved him into his little transportation pod. Then he was off to the NICU and we had to wait for about an hour to go see him.

His numbers were looking pretty good, he was just having to work too hard to keep them there. He also needed to get a little extra of some fluid (surfactant) that hadn't completed developing in his lungs. So last night they put him on a ventilator and gave him two rounds of the lung treatment.

And that leads us to where we are now. He still has the vent in, but his numbers are looking very good and they are just waiting for him to wake up a little bit from his medications so they can remove the vent. That will be great, because then we will be able to pick him up and hold him (although we have both already had a chance to change his diaper - I think Kristi is much better at it than I am and I may have her be in charge of that department).

Which leads us to our future...the suckling / swallowing reflexes usually don't develop until the 36-38 week range, so he may have to spend a couple weeks in the NICU until he develops that action. Until then he has an IV for nutrition and Kristi is working on pumping some milk so we can have some for him. His survival is not in question with anything that they have done, and there are no risks of any long term effects. All of it is worse for us than him, since we were looking forward to being able to hold him, have him in our room and take him home with us. But I guess that is just like a kid to mess up the grown-ups' plans. We're just happy he is here and that baby and mommy are both doing fine.

We love ya's!

- Christian, Kristi and Corin