I decided its about time I updated this good ol' blog. I'm not very good at keeping people informed on what is going on with Brigham (or any of the rest of us) so maybe I'll give it a go. Brigham is only a week away from being 3 months old. I seriously can't believe how time flies. It seems like just last week I was pregnant and miserable.

He is doing really well. When we first got home from the hospital things were pretty rough. I didn't adjust to 4 kids well at all. Brig was so fussy for a while that I ended spending most days in my room with him. He demanded a lot more attention that any of my other newborns....and none of them were necessarily easy babies. After being home for about 2 weeks I decided to start giving him half formula/and half pumped breastmilk. He was being such a lazy nurser that he never really was able to get full. This causes a lot of gas for him and A LOT of crying. I go back and forth a lot trying to decide if that was the best thing to do. The only reason is that I HATE pumping and formula costs a ton of money. Life has became easier since then though. Don't get me wrong. He still demands a lot of attention and he still has a really sensitive tummy but things did get easier when I started bottle feeding.

He is almost 11 pounds now. What a little chunker. He smiles a lot and really likes to be talked to. When he is fussy the big kids will come and talk to him and it almost always calms him down. It is so nice not to have to be holding him all the time. He likes to eat....seriously he has a major appetite. He eats 4 ounces every 2.5 hours or so. I have tried feeding him more in hopes to not feed him as often. He must have a small tummy though because anything more that 4 oz. doesn't stay down.

I was really hoping to be completely done with the oxygen by now. Unfortunately his oxygen saturation is quite what it should be so we are still using the oxygen at night. His saturation needs to be above 90%. When is dips below that it means his organs aren't getting enough oxygen. The dr. here thinks after another month with it on at night that we will be ready to get rid of it. He does need it during the day sometimes but the dr. thinks its ok for him to be without it unless it drops below 90% for more than a few minutes. Brigham hates the tubes up his nose. He pulls it out a couple times a night. I feel so bad for him. It can't be comfortable!

I'm gonna post a few pics of him. There are a lot more pictures that I need to post of him and the other kids too. Maybe someday I will be more consistent about this blogging thing.

Not really a current picture. We were heading to the dr. One of the few outings he had been on at the point. He is about 7 weeks old in this picture.
The first day in the NICU. This was before his jaundice spiked.
Right after he was born.....when we had no idea what we were in for.
Day 2 in the NICU. So sad with the blindfold and stupid ventilator.

Day 11....I think, and day 12

I haven't had a lot of time to keep this updated.....sorry. I'm trying to be good about answering all of the text messages and facebook comments. If I haven't responded to you I am really sorry.

Brigham is doing pretty good. He has been on high flow nasal oxygen since Monday. He was really getting tired of the nCPAP so the decided to go to high flow. He is much more content with that big tube out of his face. He is still breathing too fast but they are slowly weaning him down on the oxygen. He started out getting 6 liters per day and he is now down to 3. He has to be at least down to 2 in order for me to nurse him and he needs to keep his respiratory rate below 70. I am kind of nervous to nurse him....they keep talking about the risk of aspiration and that just kinda freaks me out. The told me a lactation specialist and an occupational therapist and a nurse will be there to help so that is kind of comforting. After he has nursed well for about 48 hours we will be able to go home.

Yesterday started rough for me. After talking to the nurse I felt like we were going to be here FOREVER. I am really ready to go home and have all of my little family together and back to normal. After a breakdown we decided to take the kids to do something fun. We had some passes to Hollywood Connection in West Valley so we headed up there. The kids had a blast. Millie and Levi loved all the rides. Callie hated them. Josh took Millie and Levi on the bumper cars several times and they all really loved that. Josh and Millie spent the night in West Valley with his parents and then headed back home today. I drove back to my parents house late last night. I had some milk I needed to drop at the hospital and Todd and Ashley were going to come and watch Levi and Callie while I ran inside. My kids were so tired that I almost decided not to stop. I just had to stop though and I am so glad that I did. I don't think I would have been able to live with myself if I knew I had let a whole day go by without seeing my little Brig. He was wide awake when I got there so I held him and cuddled him for a while.

Today I ran over there for a little while. He had been upset and crying so I held him and calmed him down. I had promised Levi that I wouldn't spend too much time there. Poor little Brig started crying again when I put him down. It breaks my heart. I am headed back there tonight to give him and bath and hold him while he gets fed.

I'll post some more pictures soon! I have lots of them.

Brigham's Birthday!

I guess I better type all this out before I forget.

On Friday, May 6, I had a dr. appt. The dr checked me and I wasn't at all dilated or effaced. The plan was for me to come back on the 16th and if I was dilated to at least a 3 he would start me. If not we would have to wait another week.

Well Brigham had other plans. My water broke just after midnight on May 7. It was just a little trickle so I wasn't positive that it had broke. I went and sat on the couch for a while because I just wasn't sure what was going on. At about 1:45 am I went and told Josh. We decided we better get packed up. By 3:00 we were pretty much packed and ready to go. I wasn't contracting at all so we decided to try and sleep a little before we left. Yeah right. Neither of us could sleep and I was getting uncomfortable and a little nervous about the 2 hour drive. We woke the kids up at 4:00 and hit the road. The kids did really great on the drive. I had been so worried about waking them up but things went really well.

Josh dropped me at the hospital at 6:30 and then took the kids to my Robert and Heidi (my brother and his wife). They were going down to my moms house that day anyway so they took our kids with them. I got all checked in to the hospital and waited for Josh to get back. The nurse did a test to see if my water had actually broken. The little strip of paper didn't turn blue fast enough so she wasn't sure what was going on. They did a few different tests before they finally decided my water had actually broken. It was a little frustrating because I knew how much fluid I had lost.

The timing is all a little sketchy to me but I think it was around 10:00 before they started the pitocin and antibiotic. I had the GBS test at the my appt. the day before so we didn't have results yet. When the happens they treat for it anyway, especially because I had tested positive before. It wasn't long before I told the nurse I was ready for an epidural. I see no point in putting yourself through pain. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. The did have to put monitors on the baby's head because his heart rate was dropping. I progressed slowly throughout the day and the nurse just kept on turning the pit up. I was starting to feel a lot of pressure but not enough to really cause a ton of pain. Between 5:00 and 6:00 pm I went from a 6 to a complete 10. Once I was complete I really felt like I had to push. I had never felt this much pressure with any of the other babies. My dr wasn't in that day so I had a different dr but he was pretty nice. I didn't have to push for very long. Maybe 10 minutes at the most. Brigham was born at 6:40 pm, eighteen and a half hours after my water broke.

As soon as he came out the doctor and nurse both commented on how small he was. I was shocked to hear that because I had measured big for the last 6 weeks or so. Just goes to show how much those measurements mean. He weighed 5 pounds 9 oz and was 19 inches long. He is such a cute cute baby.

I held him for a little while and then the nurse came in to bath him. With my other babies they bathed them in the nursery and Josh went to help. This time they bathed him right on the end of my bed. It was fun to watch that even though he was really mad about it. When she was done bathing him I thought to myself that it seemed like he was struggling with his breathing. I could see his chest retracting but I kind of thought I was just being worrisome and that the retracting was because he was so small.

The nurse took him to the nursery to warm him up and check his blood sugar. Josh left to go Robert and Heidi's house to sleep. I was running a low grade fever so I just kind of relaxed in my bed for a while. Around 9:30 the nurse came back in and told me they were taking Brigham to the NICU. I wasn't that worried. I thought maybe he needed a tiny bit of oxygen or something. Once my fever went down I had one of the nurses walk me down to the NICU. I don't know how I got through the next couple of hours. I didn't really have time to call Josh and I knew he really needed sleep. They had Brigham on nCPAP and they were giving him an IV because his blood sugar was very low. Seeing him completely broke my heart. It was so sad. The IV was hard for me to see. His hand just seemed too tiny to have a needle in it. The pediatrician showed up and looked at an x-ray. I had seen the x-ray there but didn't connect the fact that it was of Brigham. As soon as he walked in he looked at it and said, "Whoa, thats UGLY!" One nurse came to me and put her arm around me while another nurse kindly told the dr that the mom was in the room. The doctor felt really bad that he hadn't noticed me and been a little more gentle with his comment about the x-ray. He explained to me what he meant and apologized a lot. He decided that Brigham needed to be intubated and put on the ventilator so that he could have a dose of surfactant. He told me that Brigham had premature lung disease I started watching as they intubated him but had to turn away. The x-ray people came back in and did another x-ray to make sure the tube was in right. Once he was stable things kind of calmed down a little bit. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I was really really tired and knew I better get some sleep. I didn't know what a good mom was supposed to do though. Sleep or just stay there and stare at my sick baby. A very nice nurse gave me a hug and told me the best thing I could do for my baby was go and get some sleep. I am so glad I listened to her.

I texted Josh to fill him in and I told him to just stay there and get all the sleep he could. Then I tried to sleep but I am not sure I was very successful. At this point I still wasn't really that worried. Maybe things just hadn't sunk in yet. The next few days were really rough. Hopefully I can get around to writing about them soon.

Day 8

The nurse practitioner called this morning (this has been one thing I love about UVRMC, the nurse practitioner always calls after doing rounds). She went down on his nCPAP pressure so now its at 7. The plan was to take him off of it this afternoon. I got there at 10:30 and one of the nurses told me she thought they had taken him off. I was so excited but as soon as I saw him I realized that he was back on the nCPAP. What happened is Brigham pulled the tubes out of his nose 3 times in about 15 minutes. He was getting MAD at them trying to get them back in so they decided to see how he would do without it. Within a few minutes he was breathing really fast again and retracting quite a bit. So they put him back on. BUMMER.

He has really developed quite an appetite. He definitely lets us know when he is hungry. We decided to go up 3 mL every feeding. He is really tolerating food quite well. By tomorrow he should be completely off the IV and just getting breastmilk. Now if he would just get off the nCPAP so I can nurse him.....grrrrr.

I decided not to go back tonight. Levi and Callie and I have been playing together. Josh and Millie are still in Afton. They are coming back tomorrow and I am so excited for them to get back.

Baby Brig the birdy

I love this picture! Brigham is wanting to eat and he kept smacking his lips together. The nurse dropped a tiny bit of milk into his mouth and boy did that make him happy!

Day 7

I can't believe that Brigham is a week old now! Its weird because the week has seemed to go by so fast but yet time just seems to be dragging on forever.

Brigham is still on the nasal CPAP. His breathing does seem to be slowing down a little bit and he is no longer getting the antibiotic. The pressure on the nCPAP is set at 7. That probably needs to go a little lower before he goes off of it. I was at the hospital from 10:00 until 1:30. Then I went back around 7:30. He needed a bath so I went in time to help with that. The nurses are really great about letting the me as much as I can. I gave him a sponge bath and he did not like that AT ALL. I like having him smell good though! After the bath it was time to eat and I got to hold him while he was fed. We have been going up on his feeding and down on the IV. He has really developed an appetite and he really likes being fed. He was wide awake and really liked being held tight and talked to. It was really hard to go home without him. :(

SO CUTE!!!!

This is Brigham on day 5 not long before he got off the oscillating ventilator. I could look at this kid all day.