Surgery and Home

Night before surgery with whale shark for support :)

  Yesterday Bubs had surgery on his hernia.  We had planned on taking him home with Estelle, but instead the doctor confirmed his hernia and told us he would need to stay.  We are blessed to be friends with one of the NICU nurses, and she came over to watch Estelle with my mom allowing David and I to both be at the hospital.  No one feels comfortable watching Estelle alone.  She is on three monitors...but more on that later.
  They had to stop Dane's feedings at 2am the morning of surgery.  He was not happy, the boy likes to eat.  He also had to get two IVs and had to be intubated (put back on the ventilator) during the procedure.  It was torture waiting for them to take him down.  He was scheduled for noon, but they didn't get to him until 1:45pm.  He was hungry and tired and cranky.  We got word that the procedure had gone well and waited for him to come up hoping he would be extubated.  He wasn't.  He was still on the ventilator not breathing on his own yet.  They had to wait until he woke up and started to breath on his own before they could take him off.  The problem was he would wake up and have a fit because he had a tube down his throat and was in pain and then would fall back to sleep.  He did this twice, and then the respiratory therapist turned down his settings and he began to take breaths for himself.

Post surgery and extubation in HUGE diaper!

  Thankfully he gets to resume feedings today (up until now it has just been IV fluids) and the hope is that he gets back up to full feedings and we could take him home early next week.  We can't wait to have him home and Estelle misses him.
  Speaking of Estelle, she is HOME.  I need to dedicate a whole post to this but in the chance my blogging time dwindles as the number of babies increases, here is the abbreviated version.  She has 3 pieces of equipment: an apnea monitor, an oxygen saturation monitor and we have an oxygen tank.  It is basically a small NICU in our house.  Our biggest struggle hasn't been monitor related but instead keeping her warm.  Little girl has always had a hard time keeping her body temperature up.  At one point we had the thermostat set on 77, a space heater and the kid was bundled like an eskimo baby!!  We have settled into her happy place at 73, space heater, hat, socks under footed sleeper and swaddle blanket.  We are also getting a routine which I have been told is essential with multiples- which hopefully I will have all together soon!