17 Sept - Big up for dad

Sammy forgot to celebrate his 1 month birthday on Friday and has been a bit down ever since. No visits to the paed's office though, just an uncomfortable gut resulting in frequent desaturations and a generally unhappy little muppet. Unfortunately this has meant that his breastmilk feeds have had to be halved from 8.5 ml per hour (6.5 at last post) to 4. He's had to revert to two intravenous antibiotics so a line was placed in his arm again after a blissful few days of none at all, just the feed tube going into his gut via his mouth. To give his tummy a break Paul has today tried unsuccessfully three times to bypass his gut and get the tube feeding directly into the next tract of the digestive system. This meant three X-rays to check each time whether the pipe had found its mark. So he's had a rough day of poking, pushing and being irradiated but at least he's still breathing OK on the nasal prongs though the general state of discomfort has meant frequent oxygen desaturations today.

So it was to my great surprise while finishing book three in the Chronicles of Narnia that Vicky said it was time for me to have a hold of him. Whoa! She took the view that if he was crying anyway it might calm him down to do something different for a bit. So I had a glorious 10 minutes this evening holding my little man for the first time - almost five weeks since his birth. I think we both couldn't quite believe it as we stared like rabbits caught in headlights into each others eyes in between bawling sessions (from both sides!). He is still very very small but his eyes have life, curiosity and fight in them. He's warm and full of attitude.

I think I forgot to mention in earlier posts that he has recently weighed in at 1300grams which everyone was quite chuffed about.

Mich and I are both starting to feel very fatigued with the routine of hospital, work, home, Matt, eat, hospital, sleep now well established. She continues her superhuman effort on the breastpumping front and is now spending longer periods at the hospital as she got the skin to skin kangaroo care going this week. Frequently I stop and consider that she hasn't had more than 3 hours consecutive sleep for 5 weeks and probably won't for another 10. Don't try that one at home!

We are being sustained by One greater than us!