Happy 1-week birthday

Veronica and Colin celebrated their first week of life today — well, I guess it would be more fair to say we celebrated for them. It feels like they have been with us for much, much longer.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Colin felt much of the celebration, as he had his worst day so far. Last night the upper right part of his lung collapsed — he is breathing okay now, but the lung still is not fully inflating. He also was not able to process the breast milk again last night, and they had to suction a lot of “goop” out of his stomach and stop the feedings again.

This morning, Colin’s heart rate dropped very low, and his respiration levels were very high. At one point, the nurses sent John away and several were working on getting him stabilized again. John said it was pretty scary to see him being worked on like that. (And I can say it was very scary to hear about it after the fact.)

By the time I got over to the NICU late this afternoon for my visit, they had decided some of Colin’s problems might stem from anemia, so he was getting his second transfusion when I arrived. Colin’s nurse was a little concerned because his heart rate was now very high, as was his respiration rate. But she thought it might be at least partially because of the transfusion.

Colin very clearly responds to John and I while we’re visiting — his vital signs tend to fall closer to normal and he has fewer spikes or drops while we’re there. This was the case this afternoon as well. I was able to bring Colin’s respiration rate down to where it should be by sitting with him and holding his hand and feet. His heart rate also dropped some, although it remained high. He seemed to be doing a little better by the time I left.

Veronica continues to do well, and has become a very mellow baby. She is up to 11 ml of breast milk every 4 hours, and has put on weight. She continues to have the bradycardia episodes (where her heart rate drops very low), but is able to pull out of them on her own for the most part. The nurse today told me she thinks the bradys may be related to reflux, since Veronica seems consistently to have an episode about an hour after she has eaten. If that proves to be the case, they likely will start Veronica on prevacid to treat the reflux.