Quick update

I'm exhausted, so I'll do a quick update and then do a better post later.  Collin was able to come home yesterday- yeah!!  He did fail his car seat test though.  They had him sit in it and after only 20 minutes his oxygen level dropped to 85 and stayed there.  They tried it again a few hours later and the same thing happened.  So we had to bring him home in a car bed and we can't sit him up in anything like a swing or bouncer until he passes his car seat test.  We'll do it again at his pediatrician appt next week.  Hopefully he'll pass because he barely fits in the car bed!  Usually babies as big as he is pass with no problem.  Scotty was so cute when we brought Collin in the house.  He looked at him and said "Ooh- he's so cute!"  He has been really cute with him and has wanted to hold him and will kiss his head.  We love it!  Grant has patted his head and also scratched his forehead!  He smiles when he comes close to Collin though and that is cute.  We're now getting used to having a newborn in the house and all the changes that brings.  Especially the long night time feedings!

Scotty's party went really well yesterday.  We really lucked out and had the only nice, warm, sunny day that was in between two snow storms.  We have snow covered lawn outside right now so we are very grateful that we were able to have nice weather and have his party outside yesterday.  We rented a bounce house and the kids had a blast.  I'll post pictures from his fun days soon.

Gotta love this face!

Exciting, wonderful news!

I got a call from the hospital this morning asking if we have a car seat and could we bring it in today.  I said yes and the doc said that he's in an open crib and doing well and if he did well for his car seat check that we could take him home TOMORROW!!!!!  I was so excited!  I was not expecting this at all.  I went in today and he was unhooked from all his monitors and it was great to be able to hold him for as long as I wanted.  It is ironic though- Scotty's birthday party is tomorrow afternoon and just today it looks like I am getting mastitis and feel like crap!  But we'll deal with whatever comes up and make sick family stay outside and everyone else wash up really good.  He is a trooper and has done much better than anyone expected.  We would like to thank everyone for their prayers, thoughts and help.  We really appreciate it.

Progress!

So, Collin's already a little stinker and has been pulling all of his tubes and wires off.  He pulled his IV out and he was always pulling his oxygen down and sometimes would get it in his mouth like a pacifier!  Now he pulled out his feeding tube, but they decided to leave it out and see how he does and so far, so good!  He did well with all of his bottle feedings up until I got there today.  I nursed him and he was very sleepy.  I was worried he wouldn't eat, but after a lot of poking, prodding and rubbing he did pretty well.  He was never alert but he was eating and that's all that matters.  We'll be praying that he'll continue to do well with his feedings and won't have to have the tube put back in.  His is slowly going down on his incubator temp.  They are going to take it easy on that so that he can use all of his energy on feeding without his tube.  But it probably won't be too long before he's going to be able to come out of that too if things keep going this well.  He has now been in the nursery the longest- all of the babies that were there when he got there have gone home.  All of the nurses tell us how cute and sweet he is.  I agree!

Here's his cute face without any accessories!

Today

I had a good visit with Collin today.  Grandma Geri drove me and and she was able to hold him and take some new pictures.  I'll have to post some when I get them from her.  He ate really well and then I was able to snuggle him for a long time.  The nurse knew I was coming so she fed him in his incubator the feeding before I came so that I could keep him out longer.  She also moved his monitor into the little mother's room and I was able to feed and cuddle him in there instead of out in the nursery.  It was wonderful.  He's still about the same.  Doing well on his oxygen levels and getting a little better everyday with his feeding.  They've turned down his incubator a little bit and hopefully will be able to keep turning that down.  They do that very slowly so they don't stress the babies out.  

Miles took the kids to church this morning and I stayed home and got some much needed rest.  Scotty was sung to in Primary for his birthday and they gave him three blocks in red, yellow and blue with the letters CTR on them.  They are cute.  Of course he wants to bang them together and play with them rather than display them nicely!  Grant was tired during sacrament meeting and was screaming!  He is a very loud boy!  I am exhausted.  I'm starting another week of ward members driving me into the hospital everyday and it makes me tired to think about it!  They come at 10am and sometimes it's so hard to get myself ready by that time.  Going into the hospital everyday has not been good for my recovery so I'm still tired and sore.  And emotional!  I had to go to my room tonight to cry after both Scotty and Grant made it very clear that they only wanted Daddy to help them get ready for bed and didn't want anything to do with Mommy.  Ug.  Hopefully time will heal all these things!

No more oxygen

Great news today- Collin's off of his oxygen!  He even kept his levels at a good rate while feeding and that is usually hard for little babies.  It was good to see him without the oxygen tubes on his face and this is a big step toward coming home.  He fed well in the morning and then I was able to feed him and he ate really well.  We came back for the next feeding and he was sleepy, sleepy, sleepy and wouldn't wake up to feed, so we had to tube feed him.  I took his temperature and it was a bit high so they said if he had one more high temp reading then they would start turning down his incubator.  He's heading in the right direction!

Miles and I were both able to go into the hospital today and it was really nice.  Mark, Lissa and their boys came out and played with Scotty and Grant so we could go and we really appreciate them.  The boys had so much fun with their cousins.  We were also able to get Scotty's birthday shopping done.  He'll be 4 on Tuesday- can you believe it???

He is so cute!!

Here he is getting his tube feeding.

Snuggle time with Daddy.

Snuggles with Mommy.

Fuzzy hair

They took Collin's IV out of his head so I thought I'd post a new picture and you can see his cute fuzzy hair.  We had a good visit today.  He ate for 20 minutes again and was awake and alert for about 10 minutes.  He gets really tired after bottle feeding so they are doing about half and half of bottle and tube feeding.  They gave him a tube feeding before I got there so that he'd be awake when I came in and it worked great!  His oxygen is turned down really low so hopefully he'll be off of that pretty soon.  They're starting to wean down on the incubator too. He lost a little bit of weight yesterday but the pediatrician said that over the past week he has gained so that is good.  Everyday he is getting stronger.  They main thing he has to work on is eating.

Here he is pooped out after eating!

More good news!

I got more good news when I went to the hospital today.  The nurses said that he had most of his feedings by bottle since I was there last.  That is a really good improvement and everyone was really excited about it.  For his feeding this morning he ate more than normal and the nurse said she just couldn't believe how well he was doing.  Then when I came in for the 11:30am feeding I couldn't wake him up!  We tried and tried but he was so pooped from eating so much that morning that he just kept snoozing no matter what we did.  So I just held him and snuggled him and it was so nice.  They do a weird thing- when it's time to feed again they take a syringe and draw out from his feeding tube whatever is left in his stomach to see how he is digesting.  She had me do it today and it felt so weird!  I feel like that would not be nice to have food sucked out of my stomach but she reassured me that it didn't bother them.  He had lots in his stomach left over so they said he went a little crazy that morning.  They turned off his IV fluid- yeah!  They want to start weaning him off the oxygen and they tried to turn it down but he had a hard time so they put it back to the level it was at.  He might struggle with that for a little while longer.  But we're seeing little improvements everyday and we are very happy.

I had Scotty give me a kiss to give to Collin and Scotty smiled really big- it was cute!  So I gave Collin lots of kisses from his Daddy and brothers at home who can't wait to see him.

Here he is in his isolette.  One nurse called it his condo!

Good day

I had a good day with Collin today.  My neighbor drove me in to see him and I'm so grateful for my good ward members that are willingly signing up to drive me into the hospital everyday.  I got there and the pediatrician came over and said that he is doing well.  He had been having a lot of episodes of his heart rate dropping and the nurses would have to come over and move him and rub him to stimulate him enough to get his heart rate back up.  He was having quite a few of these episodes a day and they were concerned but the pediatrician said that they are slowing down and they are pleased about that.  He is still having problems keeping his oxygen level up so we'll just have to wait for him to get that under control.  They have increased his feeding amount through his tube and have decreased his IV fluid that that is good also.  The best news of the day was that he nursed with me for the first time ever and even went for 20 minutes!  The nurses were going crazy about how wonderful and shocking that was.  They said if he kept that up then he'd be going home soon.  Yeah!  It's good to hear positive news.  He's still as cute as ever!


Here he is with his eyes open. They have a hint of blue in them! He pulled the IV out of his hand and they had to move it to his head. It looks scary but they said that they are better in the head.

Another bit of good news we received today was from our insurance company that my helicopter flight was authorized. Whew!!


Notice my hand on that guy? I really, truly felt like I was going to fall off of that thing and I had to grab onto him to keep myself from falling! They kept reassuring me that I wasn't going to fall but what did they know, right??

Collin's here!!!

We had quite a surprising, exciting and stressful past few days around here.  On Thursday March 12 at 11:45pm Collin Steven Lawrence was born at 34 weeks at the University of Utah hospital.  He weighed in at a whopping 6lbs 1oz and was 19" long- which is pretty big for being 6 weeks early!  I went into the Tooele hospital around 4:30pm Thur afternoon with very, very mild contractions to be monitored thinking that I'd be sent home with orders for bed rest or something.  I ended up leaving the hospital a few hours later via helicopter on the way to the U to have the baby!  I came home today and had to leave Collin there which was very hard to do.  We don't know how long he'll have to stay.  He needs to be able to control his temperature, keep his heart rate steady, keep his breathing rate steady and be able to eat on his own before he can come home.  I will be going in to visit, hold and feed him at least once a day with help from wonderful ward and family members.  I'm exhausted and I will give a more detailed update soon!

Here's his first picture with Mommy and Daddy.

He's hooked up to lots of wires.

He's very handsome even with the wires and tape all over!

He has lots of dark hair.