A good week

Overall we have all had a pretty good week.  Lucas has been able to stop taking a lot of medicines (he was on 14 different IV lines of meds last week...  The most his nurse had ever seen was 16), his blood gases have been excellent, x-rays are looking slightly better, and he is now weened off the nitric oxide.  His swelling has gone down a little bit too.  They weighed him on Friday and he weighed 4 and 1/2 lbs.  Most of that was swelling from fluids.  They estimated his dry weight to be around a little over 3 lbs.  Right now the plan is to get him weened down on his oxygen, recover from the lung burst and barium in his right lung, and gain weight (he is getting a new TPN with more calories).  One of his chest tubes randomly came out on its own yesterday.  They did an x-ray and determined that his lung was healing fine without both chest tubes so they left it out.

Little Miller man is doing very well.  He had an x-ray and it looks like the NEC has cleared up and he will be starting feedings of milk again today.  He has to get a blood transfusion this afternoon.  I was a little worried when the nurse called us to ask for our consent for the blood transfusion, but she assured us that nothing was wrong and that it was mainly to help him feel better and give him a little boost.  So after his blood transfusion, he will start off very slowly on milk feedings.  The first one will only be 2cc but they will gradually increase the amount over the week and hopefully by this weekend he will be taking a bottle.  Some of the nurses even think he may get to come home next month.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up but it's exciting to think about.  It will be so bittersweet though since Lucas will be in the NICU for a while.  He still has at least 2 surgeries ahead of him- a heart surgery and surgery to repair his esophagus.

This has got me thinking lately that we need to buckle down and start buying all the things we never got a chance to buy before the twins were born.  I have exactly 2 preemie outfits.  I didn't save very many of Declan's newborn outfits either so I am going to have to shop for preemie/newborn clothes.  Luckily we got the biggies- a double stroller and new car seats.  Now we just have to stock up on diapers and things like that.  At Target the other day, the cashier asked me if we would like some coupons for diapers and I was like, "You have no idea how many diapers we will be going through soon."

The boys are overall having a better week.  I, on the other hand, am having a worse week, physically.  I was doing fine last week and all of a sudden my belly got really tender and sore.  Tom says I'm trying to do too much and not resting enough.  I have had such a different recovery with this c-section.  I've experienced both  ways of having a baby and I am having a much more difficult recovery this time.  I apparently have developed an allergy to penicillin recently.  I took an antibiotic this morning and a few minutes later my throat starting closing up, I started itching like crazy, and I was having problems breathing.  Luckily, it went away after a few minutes but it was scary!  I called the nurse line at my doctor's office and she said the same thing happened to her after her pregnancy.  I was told not to take penicillin anymore.  Another weird thing that has happened after this pregnancy is that my hair has gone nuts.  It is seriously a completely different texture.  I'm so tempted to just cut it all off but I always regret it when I do.  Pregnancy has taken such a toll on my body.

Say a prayer that the improvements keep coming!  We are hoping for more and more good days!