21st Posting: Home Sweet Home

On January 17, 2011 our son Luke David came home.  He is absolutely perfect besides needing oxygen for feedings.  Our life can begin again.  Thank you God.  If you are a pPROMer, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.  My email address is kristinsteffen1973@yahoo.com.  Remember, the doctors have no clue about what can happen.  There are risks, but where there's life there's hope.

20th Posting: Quick Update

I think my days of blogging are numbered.  Life has really taken hold and I'm having less and less time for writing.  Maybe when Luke comes home things will be different, but I seriously doubt that.  It's amazing how different my bed resting self is compared to my every day self.  I had more time to be reflective when I sat all day.  I was more introverted as well.  I do have to say this experience has given me a level of gratitude I don't ever remember.  There is so much to be thankful for.  I've realized how precious life is!  Often times, I'll think about my mom being taken away so suddenly at age 49, but now, my son's life has been spared.  How easy it would have been for God to take Luke up to Heaven with Him, but for some reason, He decided to let me know my little guy. Unbelievable.

Luke is now on low-flow oxygen cannula.  He is at room level of 21% most of the time.  When he feeds his oxygen is increased by 5% just to help out a little bit.  He also needs a boost when we're holding him or caring for him somehow, not by much though. 

Our baby boy was given an MRI last Friday.  When I came to see him, all the doctors ecstatically came up to me stating how Luke is a miracle.  The brain scan was PERFECT.  Sometimes, when babies are on oxygen for a span of time, parts of their brains stop developing.  His is fine.  He also had a cyst on his first MRI.  We were told it was benign and 40% of the population has this cyst and doesn't even know it.  There concern at the time was its size.  Well, that's gone too.  Yup, he is perfect.

So right now, we're basically waiting on the eating thing.  He's really making progress, but still tires out or loses interest.  It's only a matter of time.  

To think this ordeal is coming to an end and is a happy ending!  God is good and prayer is powerful.  I am so thankful.  Absolutely amazing.

Luke is 10 weeks old today, 38 weeks 1 day gestationally. 

Our First Family Picture taken on Christmas Day. 
The girls' got to see Luke from a viewing room since it's flu season.

19th Posting: What a big boy!

Luke got weighed today.  At 35 weeks 5 days gestational age "little" Luke weighs in at 6 pounds 5 ounces.  Ginni was born at his age and she weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces.  He showed her!

With Christmas around the corner I have been pretty busy keeping up the house, shopping, and spending time with the girls and Luke.  Haven't had much time for putzing around on the computer at all!  By the time I do sit down at night, I'm pretty exhausted.  It's been about 7.5 weeks since the C-section and I'm almost 100%.  There are times when I need to soak in a hot bath because my legs and feet hurt, and don't ask me to run unless you want to laugh.  The muscles in my legs are nearly nonexistent, so lifting them is difficult.  I'm sure it looks funny though.  The thing that confuses the heck out of me is I haven't lost much weight.  How can a person go from sitting on her butt all day to constantly moving, and have the scale barely budge?  I know, I know.  It took time to put that weight on.  It'll take time for it to come off, but seriously, am I not burning a gazillion more calories now than when I was on bed rest?  My body would ROCK in a famine, but in this day and age...not so much.

Luke, however, is definitely rockin'!  I can't believe all that has happened to him since I last posted ten days ago.  He is off the oscillator.  He was on cpap FOR ONE DAY!  Now, he is on something called "vapor therm".  This is a small tube with prongs that go up the nostrils.  It looks just like the oxygen tubes you see older people wear in Wal-Mart.  The only difference is the air is pressurized and has humidity added.  Now, when I go see him, I can pick him up without any help from the nurses.  I can rock him and give him a pacifier.  He still has a feeding tube but wants to eat really, really bad.  When he gets hungry, Luke starts moving his head back and forth with his mouth open as if saying, "Hey, where's the goods?"  Right now, we drip a bit of milk on his nuk and then he settles right down.  All the nurses say he'll do great once the feedings start.  His condition needs to get a little bit better though.  The pressure on the ventilator shows a measurement of 5.  The doctors want it to be 4.  Yup, we're getting close.

Other than that, Luke has been awake more.  He has big, blue, eyes.  His hair has a reddish tint to it, just like his daddy's did when he was little.  Ginni also had reddish hair.  Charlotte and Emma were more like their dear, old mom.  Luke also loves to be held.  If he's crying in his crib (yes, I said crib), he'll stop immediately if someone picks him up.  The  nurses have spoiled him, but that's okay.  I'm sure the trend will continue when our little man gets home.  Oh, and we actually have a forecast for that.  Three to four weeks.  Merry Christmas to us!!!

18th Posting: Luke 6 Weeks Old!

This was my first time holding Luke this way.  He slept the whole time.

Picture of our little night owl.  I hope he gets his nights and days in order before he comes home!

Last moments in his isolette!

Luke sleeping peacefully in his new bed.  Gosh he's getting big!

17th Posting: Still Going in the Right Direction

Sorry I haven't been on here in awhile.  Been going through a bit of the "baby blues" as my mom used to call them.  Luke has helped me get past them though.  He has truly been doing well!

For the longest time his numbers were stable on the ventilator and we were fine with that.  It was great hearing he was the same versus getting worse.  For a week and a half things stayed pretty consistent.  The doctors even stopped giving him daily x-rays of his lungs because they felt it wasn't needed.  After awhile though,  it was time to shake things up.  Luke seemed too comfortable at this state.  They wanted him to get better!  So even though his oxygen and blood gas (the amount of carbon dioxide in his blood) percentages weren't as low as desired, they started adjusting the ventilator just to see what happened.  Well, to put it bluntly,  he did fantastic!!!  Before the adjustment Luke's oxygen was around 35 percent.  After, it's been around 23! He's doing so well infact, that the doctors have starting talking about the next step--cpap.  Cpap is a type of ventilator that is placed in the nostrils.  Pressurized air is put into the lungs that way.  The tubes that have been in his throat since the day he was born will be removed.  He will be able to cry (which will be cool at first but I'm sure will lose it's novelty FAST).  We will also be able to hold him much easier.  And most importantly, cpap is a solid step towards our little man coming home!

I'm posting some new pics of our superstar who now weighs a whopping 5 pounds 10 ounces at the gestational age of 34 weeks and 3 days.  You will notice he has graduated from the isolette (baby bed with a cover) to a regular cot.  I LOVE this.  Now, any time I go in, I can really interact with Luke.  I can talk and sing to him and he can gaze up at his gorgeous mommy and think, "How did I get so lucky?  When I get home, I'm going to sleep all through the night, change my own diapers, AND feed myself as a thank you to my mommy for
being SO WONDERFUL." What a great kid!

Seriously, it's awesome thinking about him coming home.  It won't be for awhile yet, but it does seem like a possibility now.  Definitely a good reason to snap out of those baby blues!

16th Posting: Hey, I AM a mommy!

Today was a day of firsts for me.  For the first time in many months I actually woke up feeling...good.  I didn't feel like I needed to sleep another five hours.  My body didn't ache with remnants of yesterday's activities.  Did I have energy?  Was it possible?  The answer is...yes! I did and I liked it!  

Another first, and a good one, was I finally felt like a mother to my baby boy.  For almost five weeks I've watched Luke through a plastic isolette. Many times while I'd visit him the phrase, "baby on display" would go through my head.  If I wanted to touch him, I could only do so through the provided openings.  If I wanted to sing or talk to him, I'd have to crouch down to these openings so he could hear me.  There's no intimate feelings doing it this way.  But now, things are changing.

To start it off, I helped give my little guy a bath and then, I got to put him in a sleeper.  You guessed it, first time for him and me.   The best part?  Because Luke is 33 weeks gestational age, he's old enough to have the top of the isolette raised up and turned into a warmer.  Today, I got to look closely at his face, and interact with him like a mother should.  It was absolutely wonderful.  He layed there watching me with slow, sleepy blinks as I sang and talked to him.  He smelled so good and was so relaxed.  I held his hands, which he loves, and watched him drift off.  It was the best visit I ever had with him.  Today I felt like his mommy.  It was awesome.

On a different note, this evening the girls and I were sitting around watching a movie. Ginni repeatedly glanced at me, acting like she had something to say.  Asking her what was wrong, I noticed tears in her eyes.  Ginni told me she was so worried about Luke.  That floored me.  The girls always pray for him but Chris and I just assumed it was kind of like an "out of sight, out of mind" thing.  When Charlotte overheard our conversation she started crying as well.  She said, "It's hard to believe we have a baby brother when we never get to see him."  Wow.  I had no idea these thoughts were even going through their heads.  It only makes sense.  The girls always know when something bad happens because of the way Chris and I act.  We don't really mention anything when he's doing well.  Since they can't see him because of flu season and they only hear the bad, of course they're going to believe the worst.  Poor things.  At that point, we discussed ways that they can feel more involved with their little brother.  Friday, we decided we're going shopping.  Since he can wear clothes now, the girls will pick out a couple of preemie sleepers for him.  It's also been suggested we bring in some brightly colored toys for Luke to look at in his isolette.  They're going the help pick those out too.  I also promised to show them more pictures and talk about how he's doing every day.  That seemed to help them.  As for Emma, I don't think she really understands what's going on.  She didn't seem very interested in the conversation until she heard 'shopping', but what do you expect for a six year old?

15th Posting: Some cute pics.

This is Luke being held for the 1st time by Daddy.  He's three weeks old.

Favorite picture yet!  Just had a sponge bath.  Nice and calm and awake.