As promised, I’ll be posting a special condition update from time to time in an effort to keep our friends and family up to speed on Cooper and Quinn’s progress. It’s been an interesting couple weeks to say the least… It truly is amazing how far these little ones can come in a matter of days – sometimes even hours.

SUMMARY: The resilience that I’ve witnessed in my sons in the last 26 days is unparalleled to anything I’ve ever seen before. They are improving on their breathing every day, taking my milk well, pooping and peeing as necessary (!) and gaining weight at a great pace. The next big steps will be to put an end to the A’s and B’s (see below for more info), improve on breathing with less help from modern medicine/technology, and getting my milk from the breast.

Here are the dets:

* RDS (respiratory distress syndrome) – Both boys have made huge strides in improving their RDS. They graduated from the respirator to the CPAP – and are now on a high-flow nasal canula. The next step will be to go to low-flow (which is what we all get when we get oxygen in the hospital), and then NOTHING. I think we have a couple weeks before they can test the waters with no assistance, but the guys are making great progress – especially Quinn who has come back from a pretty bad infection of the lungs.
* Lung infection – Both boys were treated with antibiotics for the pneumonia. It looks as though everything is cleared up for now. Fingers crossed no other infections get in the way of their RDS recovery.
* Head bleeds/hemorrhages – Both Quinn and Cooper’s head bleeds are improving and the doctors have assured us that this is not something to be worried about at this point.
* Apnea/Bradycardia (A’s and B’s) – Y’all probably know what apnea is (shortness or absence of breath)… well, bradycardia (AKA “brady”) is the same thing with the heart (slowness/absence of heart beat). They often times go hand in hand, and let me just tell you – it ain’t fun. In fact, it’s down right terrifying. Cooper has been having them for a couple days now. When he’s experiencing one, the machines go off, and we have to shake him to get him to take a breath. Basically that helps the brain send the message to the heart to beat. Sometimes A’s and B’s happen when they are really comfy or full… The last three times we’ve held Cooper, he’s experienced one – so we think he’s just getting really comfy cuddled in our chests and forgetting to make his heart beat. The doctors and nurses say that only having a couple per day is not a big deal, and that they should go away entirely after gestational week 34 or 35 (the boys will be week 32 next week).
* Digestive Track – the boys are taking my milk fantastically (I just wish it were as easy to make it!). In fact, they are doing so well, that they may have their central line/IV taken out this weekend. We’ll see… They are going to start having them go to my breasts next week – but not actually feeding from them yet, as they don’t have the whole suck/swallow/breathe thing down yet. They can just check out their new territory and get comfy with it before we start feeding them straight from the boob!

A lot of you have asked when we get them home and unfortunately, we don’t yet have a firm answer. They say release is generally anywhere from a month before the due date to a month after our due date. So that makes their departure from NICU anywhere from mid-June to mid-August. I have a feeling that we are looking more like late June or early July, but we’ll see. While we can’t wait to have them home to cuddle whenever we want, we are definitely not going to rush this process. We want to make sure they are 100% healthy when we get them home and off the monitors.

Thanks again for all the positive energy – it’s working!

XOXO