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Journal Key:

Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black

1/28/10 (Thursday)

This morning I managed to lose my car key at preschool. I looked upstairs, I looked downstairs. I looked out in the foyer, I looked outside. Eventually one of the teachers called to me to tell me the key had been found. It turned out my daughter had found it--I had somehow dropped it in her coat. Good job Cara!

Today Owen was off his IV! This was exciting news. He now weighs four pounds, six ounces, and is taking his food well. Ev and I both got to hold Owen today; I enjoyed holding him. He was awake and a little squirmy, but not fussy. It was nice to watch him stretch and push his feet out. He gets hiccups sometimes and makes the cutest little squeaking noise.

Tonight was ballet night! I don't get to see the class, but from what I could hear through the walls, it was a very giggly one tonight. The child claimed that she had gotten very tired. She also explained to me how they had been scientists today at preschool, and had tasted "sweet sugar" and "salt."

For family fun night tomorrow, we might actually watch some of The Wizard of Oz. We have tried to get Cara to watch the movie before, and she has declined, but today at preschool she worked on a big Wizard of Oz puzzle, and now she seems ready to watch it.

1/29/10 (Friday)

When we walked into the NICU today, we noticed that Owen's incubator, like several others, was draped with a blanket. The babies like dim light, so the nurses keep them covered up and secure. Of course, when a baby is on phototherapy for jaundice and is wearing little purple goggles, he can't tell whether it's bright out and his incubator is full of blue light anyway. Today Owen was done with phototherapy and had no more goggles! He was very happy and sleepy in his dark little box.

We got to hold him for an hour again, and he opened up his eyes and peeked at us. Mostly, though, he was enjoying being warm and wrapped up and sleepy.

Due to a scheduling mishap, the child was taken home from preschool with the promise of a family fun night, and then Grandmama called us from outside Yellow Brick Road. Good thing she called! We quickly packed a bag, promised Cara a family fun night for the next night, and were ready when Grandmama arrived at the house to send her happily off on a sleepover.

Sure enough, that tired little girl had a nap in the car on the way to my house. Before dinner was ready, though, she had constructed a parade of farm vehicles and horses moving through a parade route in our living room. Some of the horses are small enough for Polly Pocket dolls to ride, albeit unsteadily. Sadly, there were not enough dolls to populate all the vehicles, and Cara rejected a proposal to integrate dollhouse people into the spectacle - she concocted a scheme to go home for more Polly Pockets and have a second sleepover the following night. Luckily, she recollected that she would be missing a family fun night at home if she did that!

We had plans to go out in the evening, for a rock and roll show featuring impersonations of Elvis and the Beatles - http://www.jukeboxheroeslive.com/ - at the high school. When time came to leave, Cara expressed reluctance; she did not want to go. Just give it a try, we urged her, and if you don't like it, we'll leave. Well, she had a full-body reaction to old-time rock & roll - feet kicking, head bobbing - and yet, she wanted to go home. It turns out, our toys are better than Elvis; she wanted to play. We left at intermission - it was pretty late for the little girl to be up anyway - and plied her with our secret stash of Oreo's, bedtime stories, and a promise of ample playtime in the morning.

1/30/10 (Saturday)

We are more than usually upset that Cara has a little cold. I talked to the NICU nurse, though, and she thinks it's okay to come in as long as we're not sneezing or coughing. We just need to be cautious and change into germ-free shirts if we've been particularly exposed.

The plan for the day had been for me to stay home and Steve to go see Owen, but Steve thought he might be getting sick and so we traded. I kind of feel bad that he didn't get to be there, because I had a wonderful time with Owen.

He was sound asleep when I got there, in his dark little bed. I sat and watched, and he woke up in a little while and started moving around. When I peeked under the blanket on the other side, I saw that his eyes were open. It was time for him to eat, and when the nurse came over I got to change his diaper and play with him. He was wide awake and very responsive; he watched everything that was going on, and I really got to play with him for the first time. Besides changing the diaper, I also got to put his little shirt on him. The sleeves are at least an inch and a half too long. The nurse wrapped him up in a blanket, and I got to pick him up myself.

I sat with him for an hour while he sprinted and got fed through his tube. It's always nice to see him without his CPAP hat on. The nurse tried putting a different hat on him, but the first one was too small and he eventually squawked at her, which she agreed was quite justified. The second one went on, but it gradually came off and I was just as happy. He was awake for the first 45 minutes. He held my finger and watched me and we got to talk about a lot of things. He's very hard-working. He kept moving his hands around and eventually he managed to get a couple of fingertips into his mouth. He sucked on them, making a squeaking noise loud enough to be heard from the hallway.

It was a very successful sprint, and Owen's now allowed to try an hour off the CPAP three times a day. They're going to raise his limits very slowly this time, which I like. When we put him back, I got to take his temperature. They will give us his armpit thermometer when he leaves, and we will have been well trained in its use. Owen had his blood sugar checked at the same time. He was very much asleep, which made all of this easier to do. Then he got a new chin strap, having destroyed the old one by somehow getting it into his mouth, and his CPAP went back on. He got cuddled up on his tummy, with some straps over him and a heavy thing that's just like those things you can put by doors to stop drafts around him. He had those prongs back in his nose, but he was still happy. And still asleep.

Cara isn't actually feeling all that bad; she's just snuffly and sneezy. Fortunately, she has mastered the art of blowing her nose. Unfortunately, I don't have a pump of hand sanitizer at home. I want to pick some up and have her use it. A lot. Poor kid! She came home from Grandmama's house in the afternoon, when I was about to have a snack and Daddy and Aunt Claire were painting in Owen's room. She had a lot to play with downstairs, but it's always better when you can get someone to play with you. I helped make a street for her girls, moving dollhouses and arranging furniture. Aunt Claire, whose popularity remains untranscended, came down later and helped make a lemonade stand for Deesta and her sidekick. Cara managed to have out her girls, all the buildings, her tinker toys, Deesta and all of her clothes, and a tea set. Steve remarked later that any thief who broke in would think that the house had already been hit and just give up.

1/31/10 (Sunday)

It turns out that when I thought I was getting sick yesterday, I was totally imagining things. (Even if I had been getting sick it wouldn't have been so bad to go see Owen.) This was a big relief to me, since I'd really missed seeing him the day before. So today I went to the hospital and Evie stayed at home. While I was gone, my parents came up and spent some time at our house. They each played girls with Cara; apparently Grandpop is better at playing girls, because he will do whatever Cara wants, whereas Grandma has her own ideas about how to play.

When I got in to see Owen, the first thing I noticed was that his CPAP prongs were not in correctly--he had shifted them so that one prong was totally out and the other was in the wrong nostril. This was a theme of the day. He definitely does not want the CPAP on and found all kinds of ways to pull it out. If he just turns his head a little, it will pop out; but he also seems to have gotten fairly good at grabbing it with his hand and yanking it off. Fortunately most of the time I spent with him he had it off anyway.

When he first came off the CPAP, he was awake, eyes open, and spent some time looking around. But eventually he got sleepy and spent a lot of time in my arms just being very comfortable and quiet. When the time was up, he had to go back on the tubes, and he was not particularly happy about it. The nurse said this was actually a positive sign, that he still had the energy to fight after the sprint--it's a typical signal to them that he is ready to sprint more often. He is up to one hour three times a day now, but she suggested he may soon move up to two hours at a time again.

Later in the day I got to take his temperature, change his diaper (it's quite odd how I've lost a lot of my confidence in changing diapers--I'm sure I'll get it back in a few months!), and snap him back into his shirt. Usually in the incubator the baby is left totally undressed except for the diaper, and the incubator does all the work of temperature control. However this afternoon the nurse decided to let Owen try his own temperature control, and she left him dressed and wrapped in the incubator. As far as I can tell, this experiment went well, except that he returned to his hobby of constantly removing the CPAP prongs. When I finally left in the afternoon, it was with the hope that he'd finally settled and was willing to sleep again with the prongs in his nose.

I never thought when I started this journal that I'd be using the term CPAP quite so much. Go figure.

2/1/10 (Monday)

Cara was incredibly hard to wake up this morning. I was torn between wanting her to get extra rest since she's a little under the weather and wanting to wake her up so that we could get ourselves going. I went in once to try to shake her awake, to no avail. I came back in later and did eventually get her sufficiently awake that she agreed to be carried downstairs. I lugged her down and plopped her on the couch; she got comfortable and within seconds was snoring all over again.

We did get her up and to preschool. She brought her Barbie Three Musketeers coloring book, which she immediately placed in her little mail slot in the coat room. Her stuffed animal went into the nap bag. Everything in its place. Ev and I were both curious as to whether she would actually do anything with the coloring book. She did actually color one person on one page, and showed it to me in the car on the way home.

Today was also gymnastics day, and Cara said she did straddle jumps. We spent some time in the afternoon watching cake challenge shows on the Food Network--we were all riveted--and after dinner Cara went downstairs to play girls. She has a nice street worth of houses in her playroom downstairs and has different girls living in each one--woe betide anyone who tries to put the wrong girl in the wrong house. Even with our time at home these days, I still don't get a lot of free moments to play with Cara, so it was nice to have some time with her, though I ended up messing more with little plastic animals and dragons than girl dolls.

Owen is up to two hours of sprinting! We had Val as his nurse again, and she is very good at getting the parents involved with the baby. We checked his temperature, got him dressed, changed diapers, and tried hard to keep hats on his head. Evie did a kangaroo with him again. We may time that differently next time--she went first right while he was eating, and he spent a lot of time being awake and sort of squirming around. By the time Owen got to me, he was ready to fall asleep.

For the first time today Owen was dressed in an outfit! It was a cute little blue button-up thing with puppies on it (we have learned from having looked at a lot of infant clothing that boys only like dogs). It was really different to see him in a real outfit like that. We may have to bring in some of the clothes we have so he can start wearing his real outfits!

So Owen is eating a good amount at every feeding and exhibiting a lot of good, grown-up signs of hunger, including putting his fingers near his mouth and waking up and getting a bit feisty when it's feeding time. He went through his eyedrops and has no problems in his eyes now. In the incubator, the temperature is set to the lowest setting and he is dressed and doing his own body temperature control. So once he gets himself off the CPAP, he could move very quickly to a crib and be able to start practicing real feeding.

The nurse did show us a new problem today, though. He has little lumps above his privates which we are told are hernias. These are very common for preemies and right now don't seem to be causing him any discomfort, but he will need to have surgery to get them fixed. From what I read, this is a fairly simple surgery and shouldn't be that big a deal. Still, on top of his heart murmur problem, it kind of just makes us want to say, "Oh, Owen!"

Regardless, he is doing great with all of the normal preemie developmental stuff. We hope that perhaps by the end of the week, if the sprinting is carefully increased, he might be off the CPAP.

2/2/10 (Tuesday)

Fortunately it was much easier to wake up the child this morning. After a typical pancake breakfast, we got over to preschool. When Ev and I got to the hospital, we heard with surprise that Owen was already up to a three-hour sprint! He was pretty asleep when we got there, but when he started to wake up we changed his diaper and got him out. He did really well on the sprint. His respiration went up a little, but it never made the monitors beep, and when the nurse put him back on he still showed some fight. We had to take a lunch break in the middle, and when I came back the nurse suggested I leave him alone to finish out the sprint, since he was resting and it was best to keep him calm. So it worked out very well, and things are looking good for getting him off that CPAP. We changed a lot of diapers today; Evie says that she's sure Cara's poop never looked like that.

Tomorrow we may not go in to the hospital; there is a three-hour surgery happening at some point during the day which will cause the whole NICU to be closed off, and it might happen during our normal visiting time. In a way it might be a good thing since it will give us some time to do some chores. We'll see.

Tonight is our new playdate night! And fortunately for us it was Em's turn. We got pizza--from a guy! And PJ showed me just how hard he can swing a light saber. We dumped out a lot of toys downstairs, and Cara predictably attempted to string together a lot of vehicles and put girls in them. PJ kept trying to help in this endeavor, but Cara mainly rejected his vehicle suggestions. "This playing is only for girls," she insisted. "And my daddy." Uh-oh. PJ didn't take it too hard, though.

2/3/10 (Wednesday)

Today the NICU was closed for a few hours because of the surgery going on. Steve and I took this as a sign that it was time for a day off. I know we both really hated not seeing Owen, and I'm feeling guilty about it, but we really needed the day. We got a lot of important forms filled out, including getting together the materials we need to send for a copy of the birth certificate, copies of which we need to accompany our FMLA forms and the form to add Owen to our health insurance. I figured out that my first day back at work will be May 17. I also managed to get into work to pack things away, straighten things up, and say hi to people. Given the speed and suddenness of my exit, there was a lot to deal with! Steve got out and got me a new phone, a really cool one, to replace the one that I put through the washing machine last week. I don't know when we'd have gotten to half of this, had we not had a day off.

A big change I've noticed in Cara lately is that she wants to do more herself, without help. She scolded me for starting to help her put on a shirt. She wants to cut up her own food. When a door broke off of a piece of doll furniture, she rejected my offer of help. It's pretty cool.

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