WooHoo!!

Sebastian was able to take a whole bottle yesterday for me! He had done it a couple of times for the night nurses and got really close with the day nurses but hadn't really come close for mom & dad. He would just tucker out after about 15-20ml and then they would have to give the rest to him through his gavage (feeding tube). But yesterday we got closer and closer for mom & dad, and then at the 5:00pm feeding, wha la! He took 41 out of 45ml and he only needs to take 40ml. Everyone said we were doing everything right, but after a little bit you start to doubt yourself. So, yesterday was redemption!  Hopefully he did well over night and they will be able to take his gavage out. If that's the case, we are on the path towards discharge. He also gained weight the past 2 days, so, here's hoping that when we get in there this morning he gained weight again. We need 48 hours of consistent weight gain and taking everything from the bottle...

We have the baby shower this afternoon and then we will be back over at the hospital afterwards. If he took all of his night feedings by bottle and gained weight, mommy is going to be very happy and excited at the shower :-)

Anyways, here are some of the pics from yesterday. Tomorrow or later tonight I will post pics from today at the hospital and the shower.

Origin of a name

Many people have asked us how we came up with Sebastian for the little guy. Well, while we were living in Washington D.C., we were talking about different names one evening. Mark said he always liked the name Sebastian and asked what I thought. At first I thought, "Where did that come from, that's a random name..." I told him I wasn't sure on Sebastian. Then, over the next couple of days I found myself thinking about the name. 2 days later I told Mark that the name actaully grew on me and now I really liked it. So, Sebastian became a front-runner. We knew we really didn't want to use any family names, we have way to large of a family and would have to have way too many kids in order to be able to cover all of the bases, so we were able to focus on non-family names, at least for a first name. I have always loved the name Michael, and I have a very dear friend who has always had an inner strength and faith that I have admired. He hasn't had the easiest life, but he is never afraid to pave his own path and to make the decision to go down the road less travelled. So, Sebastian Michael came into play. Sebastian means "the revered one" and Michael means "one of God". We loved the town of those meanings put together. Not too mention Mark did the "yell" test. He stood downstairs and yelled Sebastian Michael upstairs, and boy is that a good name to draw out to let him know when he has got himself in trouble :-).

We are starting to feed :)

Well, Sebastian is starting to get the bottle down, for a couple seconds at a time anyways. We need to work on his stamina. Once he is able to take all of his feedings from the bottle, and able to finish them in a reasonable amount of time, we will be closer to reaching the next milestone towards discharge. We are keeping on working on breastfeeding, but he is so young, the docs and lactation consultants say it could be a month or so, perhaps longer, before he gets the hang of that. In the mean time, my pump and I are becoming best of friends. It's amazing how fast the day goes by when they are broken up into 2 hour increments. Last night I found this article online about trying to breastfeed a preemie and wow... did the author capture the feelings, frustration and hopes of a new mother of a preemie. (Here's the link to the article: http://www.breastfeed.com/articles/preemies-multiples-and-adoption/breastfeeding-a-preemie-2636/)

Anyways, he is doing well we just need to keep working on feeding so we can all come home together. The less nights we have to leave him and come home alone the better!! No pics today, we were really bad taking pictures yesterday. We will be better today, we promise. Once Mark puts together the slide show for tomorrow's shower, we will see if there is a way that we can post it online for all of those out of town to see. Thank you for all of your support! We appreciate it more than you know!!

Better & Better

Sebastian is getting stronger every day! It is incredible to witness. He is now off of all of the machines and monitors except the respitory rate & heart rate monitors. But he ill be on those up until he is discharged. They took him off of the phototherapy on Tuesday and yesterday he was able to come off of the billiblanket for his jaundice. They need to continue to monitor his billiruben (sp???) levels, but they think that he now has it under control. We hope so!

He still has the feeding tube, and will continue to have that until he completely figures out the whole eating thing. He is trying though, and with each feeding he is getting a little better. They tell me to just have patience and that I am doing everything right, but it sure is hard to keep trying without a ton of progress being seen. Appartently the whole suckling instinct doesn't normally form until 37 weeks and since he isn't even at 36 weeks, the fact that he is doing little bits here and there is a good sign. We are just anxious to be able to have hime home so that mom & dad don;t have to go through the heart-wrenching process of leaving him every night. We are still hoping to be able to bring him home next week, so cross your fingers and say a prayer for us.

Now that he is off of the machines, we can actually hold him. And now that he has a taste of what it is like to be held, he doesn't really like being put down. He doesn't normally fuss when we put him down but he has a hilarious grimace each time he is laid back in his crib. And since we weren't able to hold him for so long, all we want to do now is hold him. Which is what I spend my days doing now. And the reason there was no blog post yesterday :-) I brought my computer thinking, I'd post something throughout the day, but with him in my arms I never got there... Anyways, here are some of the latest pics from the last 2 days.

The grimace...

On Tuesday, I went to the doc for one of my follow-ups and when I arrived back at the hospital, this was the first thing I saw. Melted my heart!

We are bringing our video camera today, so hopefully we will be able to get some of his funny faces and noises on film and be able to post that. More to come...

Bye Bye Bubbler!!!

So, today we were able to get off of the Bubbles machine!! It was great to be able to see our son again instead of tubes everywhere. His oxygen levels and respitory rates were amazing today! But... the little guy decided to go and get juandice on us, but apparently 80% of premies get jaundice so, we are not too worried there. They had him under phototherapy all day today and are planning on continuing all night. Tomorrow morning they will run the blood tests again to see if he needs to stay with the biliblanket even longer. Here is a pic of him under the phototherapy. He looks like he has a little super hero costume on with he eye covers he has to wear and the feeding tube still in his mouth.

They have moved the feeding tube into a more comfortable place... his nose, so hopefully over night he won't figure out how to pull it out. Around lunch they took off the adhesive where the Bubbler canula was attached. It was great to see him again and we can wait for him to be off of the phototherapy and onto the next milestone... feeding.

Thank you to everyone for all of your love, support and prayers! We are very thankful & blessed!!

Sunday, March 7th Update

Today was another great day! When we got to the hospital, Sebastian was wide awake and even a little playful. You can definietly tell that he is feeling better and better each day. Here are some pics of him with his eyes open (we have only been able to see glimpes of his eyes so far until today).

They tried to take him off of the "Bubbler" today, and although all of his levels/stats stayed where they needed to be, he just had to work a little too hard. So it stayed on for another day and they are planning on trying to take it off again tomorrow. If we are successful in getting him off of the "Bubbler" we can start working on him eating. They have been "priming the pump" by giving him milk through a feeding tube over the past couple of days, but once he is off of the Bubbler we can try to feed him solely by breastmilk. Crossing our fingers! For those that are curious as to what the "Bubbler" looks like here is a pic:

We were also able to snap a quick shot of daddy & Sebastian getting a little bit of shut-eye together. I couldn't resist the opportunity to take this picture!

Once again tonight as we were getting ready to leave, they had to change his canula for the "Bubbler" and we got to see him with out his "helmet". This is always one of the highlights of our day. Here are the pics from today. His nose and cheecks are very red from the adhesive and rubbing alcohol from changing the canula, but he is looking really good so far and hopefully his skin can be exposed to the air tomorrow when they are successful in removing the "Bubbler"

Updates :)

Yesterday was another great day! Sebastian was much more relaxed and breathing a lot better. He does know however whenever the attention, either by Mark and myself, or the nurses, is on something or someone else. He likes to make his monitors beep by either throwing in a funky heart rate, or his new favorite, pulling of the leads and tubes. All just to get our attention back. The nurses say that you can tell he is feeling better becuase he is starting to get stubborn... wonder where he could possibly get that...

We were able to hold him yesterday for the first time since right after he was born before he was transferred to the NICU. He still had all of the leads & bubble machine hooked up, but is was still amazing to be able to hold him. He is so tiny, but will be big before we know it. As soon as we got him settled his respitory rate dropped (good thing!), and his Oxygen levels improved. We are crossing our fingers that today or tomorrow he will be able to go off of the machine! We were able to snag a couple of pics as they were changing the bubble machine attachments. He wasn't too happy with us at the time, understandably, but at least we got to see his little face and head under all of the tubes. He will be much more comfortable once he is able to be off of the machine and can move around freely. Anyways, here are some of the latest pics.

Sebastian w/o the "Bubbler" but still has the sticky stuff

Sebastian w/o the "Bubbler" and w/o sticky stuff

Being held, tubes and all...