{Week 5}

Jack had a huge week.

First things first - he's a month old, and weighs 4lb 5oz.

They took him out of his isolette this week, and put him in a "big boy bed"! He even got a tub bath!

And, the best part of the week - they took him off CPap!! 

He's the cutest ever. 

And he's doing so well without CPap! When they put the nasal cannula in, he was getting 5.0 liters per minute of air, and now he's down to 2.0 LPM! And still doing so well. 

Today we even tried BF-ing him for the first time! And at first he wasn't really that interested, but then he loved it! I'm hoping tomorrow they'll turn him down to 1.0 LPM, and let us try an actual oral feed! Keep your fingers crossed!

I sneaked this picture of Carter leaving Jack to go to Grande Prairie for work for 2 weeks. And cried.

I just want to thank everyone who has offered prayers on our behalf, and sent clothes and packages and cards, or even just a text message. This is a really hard time for our little family, even though we have a healthy baby boy, and every happy message helps. So thank you. 

{Week 4}

I thought it was weird when the little guy was 3 weeks old, and all of a sudden he's 4 weeks! On Thursday he'll be a month old! Mind. Blown. 

This little guy is only going to be little for a little while longer! He weighs 3 lb 14 oz! Hefty hefty hefty!

His oxygen requirements have decreased majorly. He was sitting between 35% and 50%, and now he's between 22% and 28%!

They increased his feeds from 18 mL every 2 hours to 27 mL every 3 hours.

His caffeine (to help him remember to breathe) has been increased as well, from 5 mL once a day to (I think) 7 mL.

And the best news of all -- they're trying him off of CPap again!! Hopefully this time he'll tolerate it better and be able to stay on High flow and eventually get off of oxygen all together! But once he's on High flow they'll try him on oral feeds!! Which has mama SUPER excited!!

He's pretty excited too! <3

how to tell you're becoming significantly lacking in household chores..

i went to dish up some leftover casserole for lunch today. i grabbed a paper plate - the smartest investment i've ever made in my whole life - and opened the utensil drawer to get a fork. no forks. i went to the dish rack. no forks. i looked in the sink. yup. there they are. all 20 forks. dirty. underneath the pile of plates and bowls and other casserole dishes and empty lunch storage containers.

the solution?

for a normal household: quickly do dishes. or, at least, grab a fork and wash it off.

for me: return to the utensil drawer. grab a spoon. use the spoon to eat casserole.

{Week 3}

I can not believe my baby is three weeks old!! This is boggling my mind.

It's been a week with a lot of ups and downs. He started needing a higher oxygen percentage (between 40% and 50% instead of between 20% and 30%), not liking cuddles at all, and retaining water. Another chest x-ray showed more fluid in his lungs, and his legs and feet and face started swelling up. In fact, he gained 9 oz this week, which is ridiculously abnormal. They started him on a diuretic yesterday, so hopefully that starts working and (I'll never say this again..) he loses some weight. 

We started being able to take him out for what are called 'bundled cuddles', because he didn't like kangaroo care. We think he likes being contained a lot more than.. I dunno. Not being contained. lol. 

The first time I held him like this I sobbed. I didn't realize how affected I had been by NOT being able to cradle him. Every mom has this idea of holding her baby, and although I had held him kangaroo style, cradling him made me feel like I could hold him and protect him and be his mom. Carter loved it too.

He also started wearing clothes this week! Yay! He's the cutest.

Mom came to visit for a couple days this week too -- she's the best. She made us a week's worth of freezer meals, and we LOOOOVE mama's cooking. We ate lasagna while we set up little man's crib!

How cute, right? But this isn't even his real bedding. We bought this second hand before we knew what we were having, but when we found out it was a boy, mom found this crib set online, so now we're just waiting for it to get here!! I'm SO excited to have a little baseball nursery!!

I also found this little picture online this week..

And, again, I sobbed. All I could think of was little Jack talking to Heavenly Father. I'm sure Jack knew the start of his life was going to be difficult, and I'm sure he asked a question similar to this one. And to think that God completely trusted him to me! And Jack is trusting me to care for him and keep him safe and even just to keep him company! Ah. It's so overwhelming, but so comforting!

{Week 2}

Jack is growing growing growing! He weighs 1280 g, which is equivalent to 2 lb 13 oz. He even surpassed his full feeds, and is getting 16 mL every 2 hours. He got his main line taken out, so now he only has his O2 sensor, heart rate, and respiration lines. He was transferred from the level 3 NICU to the level 2 {details on levels can be found here}, which was fantastic. He even went off CPAP and was on a high flow therapy machine, but the respiratory therapist decided he was working too hard because of all his decreases in oxygen levels, so he's back on the CPAP for now. He's still getting a lot of air in his belly, but it's better than it was. Today he was also really constipated, so he's really uncomfortable. It breaks my heart. :( I couldn't even cuddle him this afternoon because he wouldn't settle -- it was a lot worse for mama than it was for baby.

We were also privileged to work with The Ayla Project this week as well! This is an awesome foundation that goes into the NICU (with the permission of the hospital) and takes pictures of the babe free of charge! Because every baby deserves newborn pictures! Heather was awesome to work with, and so patient with all the alarms and nurses, and Jack's puke (x3).

We decided his eyes are brown. And his hair is blonde. He got his dad's eye color and nose and toes and hair, and his mom's lips. His ears are huge though, so we're trying to decide where those came from.

Good news from the mom front -- my swelling has finally gone down. The only issue is my cankles, but even those are significantly smaller than they were! Yay! But I tried on my pre-pregnancy jeans.. Ouch. Time to go shopping! And I had a bath. Which is like my favorite past time ever, but I couldn't before now because of the C-section. Speaking of baths, I might take another one. Mmmmm.

{Week 1}

Jack is doing wonderfully. He has surpassed his birth weight of 1162 g and now weighs 1170 g (he's been steadily gaining 20 g a day). They have his feeds up to 9 mL every 2 hours, and that goes up by 1 mL every 12 hours, which means he'll be receiving full feeds (15 mL) on Thursday. This is super exciting because then he gets a bunch of lines and tubes removed and we'll be back to an almost tubeless baby. He had some problems with his breathing this week, so they had to put a rate on his CPap machine, which basically means that 20 times a minute he was receiving an extra push of pressure. But he responded so well to that that they decreased the rate to 10 times a minute, and today they're going to try him just back on the normal CPap (fingers crossed!). He's having some problems with his belly too: he's swallowing too much air. Which means the rate makes that even worse. They've done a couple chest x-rays and done a whole bunch of blood work though, and say everything looks normal. Thank goodness.

He is still as perfect as ever - my only complaint is that he got his dad's deformed toes. :( haha we've been trying to figure out what color his eyes are - either a really dark blue, or brown. I still say brown. But he doesn't open them long enough to get a good look.

He loves kangaroo care. His favorite part of that with dad is running his fingers through dad's chest hair haha. I can't wait for him to learn how to get a grasp on it and tug. :P

He met my dad and brothers this week - he's going to fit right in with the Martins with his long limbs.

Dad and I got to change his diaper this week too, which was a new experience for dad altogether, and weird for me because we have to do it inside his intubator and the diaper is SOOO tiny, but we still have to almost fold it in half!

Motherhood is full out exhausting. And I don't even have him at home yet! I've been pumping every 3-ish hours, which means waking up 3 times a night. That's the hardest part because I know that I should be waking to a baby crying, but instead its my alarm. Emotionally I'm a disaster too. Carter and I snuck into Sacrament Meeting yesterday, but someone's new baby starting crying -- and so did I. Full on hysterics. So we left and went and cuddled my baby some more.

That is quite enough of me typing -- time to go hold my son! :)

Follow my Instagram for a plethora of Jack pictures!