Week 10, full of emotions

This week has been a real roller coaster ride.

On Monday Bennett's labs came back and his hematocrit was low again so he had a higher likelihood of needing another transfusion, but they wanted to check one more time. Bennett's eyes are also getting worse. He's at a mild stage 3 retinopathy of prematurity which is not quite surgery and of course nothing is ever cut and dry. One doctor or nurse says one thing, another person another thing. They'll check it again next week. Then the results of Bennett's brain scan came back. There is more significant tissue damage than they originally thought as its more widespread throughout his brain. It is still mild in severity at each location. The prognosis is still not clear. They say to expect at least some minor motor skill and cognitive issues, with cerebral palsy, blindness, or hearing loss as possibilities. Okay, so he already has bad eyes already and there's a possibility if blindness. Yeah. We keep coming back to the fact that it currently appears mild and are hoping for the best.

Early in the week Andrew had an episode where his heart rate and oxygen saturation went down for a minute and the nurse needed to give him extra oxygen to revive him. This was a setback for his Friday discharge.

That was some really heavy news for us to deal with and we had just finished prepping the house with mixed emotions about only bringing one of our boys home while the other stays in the hospital.

Amongst all of this, some really great things happened.

I gave Andrew a bath and held both boys at once - both firsts for me.  Kristen and I had a much needed date night - dinner at Meriweather's and a movie (the Campaign).  We're really lucky that my mom is around to help out.  Grandpa comes in town later this week and then in a few weeks the Massings are in town.  Again, we're super lucky to have all of the help.  We also keep getting positive encouragement from our firends, the Adelmans, who went through a similar twin situation.

Bennett's heart echo came back normal this week and he took his first full bottle. He's doing really well with his weight gain and feedings and they have reduced his quantity of air. Bennett had labs Saturday night and his hematocrit is up, so no blood transfusion!

Andrew passed all of his discharge tests as the week progressed. His feeding tube came out, he's getting all his food through a bottle, he's been on his back in his own crib, his brain scan looked good, his heart murmur is gone, and he passed his car seat challenge! The car seat challenge is the last test before discharge where they sit in the carseat for an hour to make sure they can handle it. The positioning is sometimes challenging for preemies.

So, Andrew is coming home Monday!!  We've been getting a lot of great coaching from our nurses on what to do with a preemie at home and we already took the CPR class.
And the next chapter begins...