Still waiting

As far as the photos go for tonight’s post, they are going to all be of Brandon. It seems like we have taken fewer pictures of Katelyn this week. I’m sure it is just because in the last couple of days she has looked like she is worse condition. However, tonight she was looking really good. We just forgot our camera :)

Derek holding Brandon

Blake holding Brandon

That looks like a smile.


Blurry picture but cute kid.

Brandon is doing really well. One of the nurses told us it must be time for Brandon to go home because it seems like when they start getting really cute, they go home. While it is true that he is very cute, it will still be a while before he goes home. He is doing well on his nursing but it will still be quite a while before he is ready to eat completely on his own. However, he is growing well. He is now 3lbs. 8oz. I know this doesn’t sound big but when you consider how small he was at birth and what he has gone through, this sounds great. One good thing is that he is growing pretty consistently every day.

The surgeon recently looked at Brandon. He is big enough that he could operate on him but he felt it would be much better to wait until he is bigger. He is doing so well that there is no need to rush. In fact, they talked with us about the option of taking Brandon home and coming back for the operation. Who knows what will happen but as we thought it over, as good as it sounds to bring him home, it may not be that exciting if we just have to bring him back for another hospital stay. It might be better to get it all out of the way and be done. We will just have to see how things go.

They moved Brandon (and one of his roommates) into new rooms. They needed more room for other babies that were being transferred into the unit. They put him in an isolation (private) room. It is quite and kind of strange to be in this new room but there are certainly some nice things about it.



As you can tell we from our previous posts, Katelyn has struggled a lot more lately. We still don’t have any answers about what caused her seizures. We just worry about all of the things that could be wrong. It has been really hard on us emotionally. We also don’t have any idea what the plan is. The doctors are going to discuss it over the next couple of days.

Because of the combination of problems Katelyn looked bad most of this week. She was heavily sedated after her second seizure. She was retaining water and looking swollen. She was put back on the CPAP machine that covers her face and causes a little swelling in the eyes. Her lungs had too much fluid. She had a pretty bad diaper rash. And of course, we now have the seizures to worry about.

The good news is that she looked GREAT tonight. They were able to take her off of the CPAP machine yesterday. They moved her into a crib and also moved her to a new spot. She was very awake and very happy tonight. She now weighs 5lbs. 1oz. It felt like we got our baby back.

I had a strange thing happen on Friday night. I went in to visit Katelyn. She had a new nurse. She had just been screaming for a long time so the nurse gave her some medication. Unfortunately this new nurse wasn’t very familiar with Katelyn and so she gave her some medication that the doctors had determined, early on, didn’t work well for Katelyn. She was asleep when I got there but I held her for a while. She began to twitch so I alerted the doctor. He looked at her twitching and he couldn’t be sure if it was a seizure or a side effect of the medication. It seemed to be very different from the way the previous seizures where described. The other strange thing is that they lasted a lot longer than 45 min. When twitching occurs as a side effect of the medication, it usually only lasts for a couple of minutes and not as long as this one did. We don’t know what it was. It is unlikely that we will ever know.

Even with all of these problems things are looking up. Amy may be able to begin nursing her again very soon.