Jack

Jack is improving with the breathing medication. He is much less irritated and does not twitch nearly as much now. Over the past couple of days, he has been taken down to half the dose he was getting when they started. He looks and acts much better...so Mom and Dad are feeling better too. They started letting us hold him again and he is so happy when we do. He's very content as are we. He is now being fed 20 cc's of milk every 3 hours and gaining lots of weight. tonight he is at 2 lbs 8 oz. He is filling out a bit, smiles a lot and opens his eyes wide when we visit.

We have not been aloud to hold Jack for a couple of days because his apnea spells along with his very low heart rate during these spells started happening almost every hour now. The Dr.'s started him on this fairly hardcore drug called Doxapram that stimulates his central nervous system into "remembering" to breath. Unfortunately, the medication has several icky side effects which Jack seems to have developed. He is twitching, crying (which he has not done much of up until now), and it seems like he is just agitated very easily. All of this is making Mom and Dad really unhappy. The good news is that the drug seems to be working and if he does not have 2 "spells" within an 8 hour nurse shift, they turn the dosage down 1 point. He is a little toughie though and gives us some smiles anyway.

We think here he might be practicing his football touchdown dance (middle pic) for later in life.

Jack is becoming much more animated these days and has a lot to say with his numerous facial expressions. He loves the sound and vibration of our voices especially when we hold him. He got his PIC line out yesterday so he thankfully has at least one less line attached to him.

The nurses have started letting us hold our little peanut more often now which, of course thrills us and seems to make Jack pretty happy too! Check out that smile!

Tonight when we showed up we couldn't see him through the window. We had to go look for him and found out he graduated to the next level and has been moved to another room. Still in ICU, but a more stable room. Everyday we get closer to the door. He's up to 12cc's per feeding and has gained 3 ounces in the last 24 hours. He opened his eyes for Mom and smiled a lot for her when he heard her voice. It also appears that he like to touch his own face. He tends to cover his eyes after a while in the light-at this age, it should be a fluke, but it's happened too often so he must be gaining some control and awareness.

A lot has been happening in the past nine days. So much that we're going to go back 2 days. Monday night Jack got his ventilator out and they started feeding him 1cc of milk every 3 hours through a feeding tube. He took the milk well and has gained an ounce so they have steadily increased 1cc every shift, he's now up to 4cc's and will be on 5 cc's by tomorrow morning. They're shooting for 1 ounce of weight gain every day. To help with his breathing, they have a C-PAP line, the nose tube just to help the air get in there, but this causes some good sneezing fits (see pic 6 below). He also got a PIC line in his arm, which is a deeper, long term IV line. With this, the umbilical IVs are out and he can be put on his stomach now instead of always being on his back.

Tonight when we went in to see him, the nurse surprised us by asking if we wanted to hold him. We, of course, said "YES!" and each took a turn for a few minutes while the nurse took his temp and did some other routine stuff. He's responding very well to Mom's voice opening his eyes when she speaks to him...not so much for Dad, so we think that is a good sign that he can distinguish different voices. Anyway, here the latest pictures from tonight.

Ellen's blood pressure shot up overnight, and about 5:30am the doctors made the decision that it had gone as far as they were comfortable with and took Ellen in for emergency C-section. Jack was born at 7:29am today, weighing in at 2lbs, 1oz and 14 1/2 inches long. We were able to see him for a brief second before he was taken to NICU. He's doing fine, breathing on his own and responding to touch. The doctors say everything looks great for both Jack and Mom.


Jack as I 1st saw him	Close-up w/o the hat	Size reference-Foot	Size reference - hand	The nurses used my wedding ring to show how tiny his arms are	This shows you just how small his diapers are.