Benjamin's Life: Six Weeks

Benjamin is six weeks old today! Or -3 days adjusted. Sometimes I still feel torn between feeling robbed of his infanthood and being robbed of my pregnancy. Either way, he's been home for just over a week and is about as newborn as they come. Since most of the pictures we've taken of him were from the hospital we decided to take him outside and take some nicer pictures. I'm not very creative with posing and mostly just let him do whatever he wanted to do but I think a lot of the pictures turned out cute.

Den of sickness

Rachel was sweet when she first woke up on Tuesday but soon turned into a beast of a child. 

Benjamin's first check-up (July 9)

Our big plans for Monday involved venturing out of the house with Benjamin. But only to go to the doctor. We slept in fairly grandly and then I showered with Benjamin (because bathing babies is a drag) and we dressed him in a cute outfit from Auntie Katharine. His shirt says "Captain Adorable."

And we're back!

Adjusting to life with three children has been more complicated than I'd imagined. Do you want to know what I imagined? Don't laugh.

What I had imagined was that we'd bring our bundle of joy home, walk through the door and be greeted by squealing, excited sisters. And there would be unicorns and rainbows, sunshine and daisies. And life would be eternally blissful. The end.

Benjamin's Life: 24-hour request

Our first twelve-hour request was rather depressing. We arrived at the hospital fro the 10 AM feeding and the nurse told us she gave Benjamin a bottle at 7:00 and that we could start our 12-hour request and be out of the hospital by 5:00 that afternoon. It didn't go so well. He got tired and had brady after brady after brady. Later our neonatal specialist pulled out his chart where bradys are recorded and showed us entry after entry of bradys and explained that we wouldn't be able to go home until the problem stopped. Our occupational therapist later told us that 12-hour requests shouldn't start with a bottle feeding--they should always start with nursing because taking a bottle is typically easier for babies than nursing is and so should be reserved for the end of the request, just in case the baby is too tired to nurse.

Needless to say, we failed. And then Benjamin had his PCG5 which revealed both central apnea and reflux. We were told we'd be going home with Benjamin on oxygen, hooked up to an apnea monitor. And we were happy with this decision because it involved the word "home" and also took some of the scariness of taking a preemie home--because if he does happen to have an apnea episode at home the monitor will pick up on it and an alarm will sound which means that I won't have to stay awake 24/7making sure that my baby is breathing.

Benjamin's Life: PCG5

The acronym PCG5 seems a bit misleading since the P is technically silent and all three letters come from the same word: pneumocardiogram. I, uh, don't actually know what the 5 is for.


Anyway, it's a twelve hour test that measures all the vitals they normall measure (respiratory rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation levels) in addition to a couple of others (effort, air flow, things like that). It also involves a pH recording to see how acidic his spit up is (in order to determine whether or not he has reflux). He got all hooked up after we did our back-to-back feeding yesterday (so around 2:30 PM). 


We didn't see him until 10:00 last night and boy was his little room crowded!


This is the normal set-up:

Benjamin's Life: Four Weeks

I keep thinking that my tears have all dried up, that I'm finally getting used to things, that I'm handling things well. And then the weekend hits and I turn into Old Faithful. The reason the weekend is so awful, I think, is because it's when Benjamin gets older.

Sure, he gets older everyday. But by the time Sunday rolls around he's a whole week older. It happens every Sunday without fail. Andrew and I will look at each other and one of us will say, "X weeks ago you went into labour," or "X weeks ago Benjamin was born," and it opens a flood of memories—horrible memories—of Benjamin's birth. The terror of realizing that our half-baked baby was coming too soon. The panic of realizing our baby really could not breathe on his own. The grief of saying goodbye before he was loaded into the ambulance. The loneliness of sitting in the hospital with no little baby to take care of. The thrill of finally being discharged and walking out of the hospital...to drive to another hospital...to finally hold my baby. The nervousness of feeling his tiny, fragile body next to mine. The fear that I would never be able to take care of him. The desire to have him home and healthy...or, better yet, to not have him here—to still be pregnant.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's strange to not be pregnant when you should technically still be pregnant. And it's strange to have a baby but not have that baby with you.

But Benjamin is getting closer to being home with us everyday. I said the weekends are difficult and this one was no different. I cried a lot on Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday.

Benjamin's Life: Back to Back

This morning Benjamin nursed and when he finished he had a test weight of +72 grams! When we went in to feed him this afternoon the nurse practitioner was there and she poked her head into our "room" and said, "Have we talked about doing a back-to-back feeding? Because if we haven't, we should. How about...if Benjamin eats really well right now you just come in for the next feeding and we'll try him on a back-to-back. Does that work for you?" We said we could make it work and then talked about how to arrange babysitters and things while I fed Benjamin. Then we did his test weight and it was +66 grams!

We made a few calls, sent a few texts, and made it so we could just stick around the hospital until his next feeding. He usually rests for six hours between feedings. I feed him at 10 AM and 4 PM and 10 AM and he gets a bottle at 4 AM. At 1 PM 7 PM 1 AM and 7 AM he gets fed via NG tube/gavage.

Today, however, I fed him at 10 AM, 4 PM and 7 PM. It's a "back-to-back" feeding because he had to nurse two feedings in a row. And he rocked it! His test weight was +53 grams.

We don't know what the plan is for the next few days but we do know that our days will be full of getting Benjamin ready to come home! I could cry tears of joy (but I've spent so many days this month crying that I think I'll pass).

Benjamin's NG tube—they only put 16 cm down his throat to his stomach

Everyday I'm pump-pump-pumping!

Before Benjamin was born the girls would excitedly list everything they were going to do to help take care of him. They were going to bring me clean diapers and take care of his dirties. They were going to sing to him when he cried. They were going to hug him and kiss him and love him forever.

Unfortunately they haven't gotten to do much of any of that.

Instead they help me pump. They like to put the labels on the bottle when I've finished pumping. They like to turn the pump on and off. Miriam likes to take the used pumps into the kitchen for me (because then she can sneak in some licks of milk—"It's so yummy!"—I'm not sure she was ready to be weaned...and I probably have enough milk to start her up again. Haha. Like that's going to happen).

The other day while the girls were getting ready for bed I mentioned that I needed to pump. The next thing I knew Miriam had magically appeared at my side. She had assembled my pump kit and brought it to me so that I could get to work.

Benjamin's Life: Bath Time

On Monday night we stayed late at the hospital in order to give Benjamin a bath. It wasn't his first bath but it was our first time bathing him. Really it was Andrew's first time bathing him since I just stood around taking pictures. Truthfully, though, Andrew is usually the one who bathes the girls because whenever I bathe them they fight and scream and we all end up angry at each other. But when Andrew bathes them they end up clean and happy. I don't know why. So, likely, Andrew will be the one giving Benjamin baths, too.

We don't bathe our children all that often so it's not like it's a huge burden.

I don't even feel bad about not bathing our children very often because Benjamin only gets a bath every other (to every third) day in the NICU and unless he covers his outfits with spit up or leaks through his diaper his clothes only get changed every other (to every third) day. If the hospital can do it I can, too!

To bathe a NICU baby you fill a little tub with warm water and use rolled receiving blankets for supports. Benjamin got wrapped in a lovely firetruck-red fleece blanket to help keep him warm during his bath. Andrew lowered him slowly into the tub and you could see Benjamin relax completely. If he could talk he probably would have said, "There's no place like home! It's warm, it's wet—it's lovely."