Aiden & Jackson: Days 17 & 18: Up and Down

I hate roller coasters. In fact, I despise them. It took me until I turned 18 to go on one that went upside down. I hated every minute of that ride. In the past 48 hours, our boys have given us quite the roller coaster ride, of which we did not enjoy one bit.

A number of positive steps have taken place in the past two days. Namely, weight gains. Aiden is now 1 lb. 15 oz. and Jackson is weighing in at the 2 lb. mark! That's right I said 2 lbs.! He will be getting a new sign above his isolette today and we'll be sure to capture that Kodak moment. One more ounce and Aiden will be there too!

Another positive: Kanagrooing! On both Friday and Saturday, Christie got to hold Jackson chest to chest for an hour. Both him and Christie absolutely loved it! There are photos below. You can actually hear Jackson cry and wimper now that he is no longer intubated. One correction that I have to make is that the boys were not on 'CPAP,' they are on 'SiPAP.' Without getting too technical (and because I really cannot explain the technical differences), the SiPAP is a step before CPAP, that provides some additional breathing assistance that CPAP does not. Next step will be CPAP.

Mr. Aiden gave us a bit of a scare Friday night when his chest x-ray showed some fogginess in his lungs. The docs took a culture to determine the exact diagonsis, but for precautionary purposes, he was put on antibiotics for 48 hrs until the culture results were available. He rode the vent pretty much all day on Friday, which is not surprising since he was tired from 4 hours on SiPAP the day before. Saturday's noon x-ray showed that the fogginess had cleared (thank God), but he would continue on his antibiotics through Sunday. Aiden was also giving back nearly all of his feeds, but no sign of bile. Saturday afternoon after a position change to the belly, he started digesting about half of his feeds, and only returning the other 50%. Nurses think he's gotta poop again to get things moving. He had a couple days without feeds when he was off the vent, so he may get some glycerin today to help stimulate the movement. His vent settings went down on Saturday and he was doing most of the breathing with the vent and also breathing above the assisted breaths he was getting. A huge improvement from his lethargy on Friday.

Chrisite is super excited because she gets to kanagroo both boys today! Maybe by this next weekend, we will start to share the kangarooing between us.

A ton of pictures and video are below. Enjoy!