Quiet Late Night

Jeff and I celebrated Father's Day at my parents' house tonight. Jeff received neat gifts. My sisters Carolyn and Erin and their significant others Chris and Brian framed a picture of Jeff holding Henry in a frame with Happy First Father's Day engraved on it. My parents got Jeff a digital picture frame. Both will look great on his desk.

We brought our dogs, Marley and Roger, over to my parents' house to give them a treat. Prior to Henry's arrival, we took the dogs on a lot of car rides (Marley loves our Honda Element). Both Marley and Roger are pound pups. We got them about 16 months ago. We still give them lots of love, but they and our cats (Princess, Jackson, and Bits) aren't getting the same level of attention lately. It's been a rather abrupt change for them. All in all, they are handling things well. A couple weeks ago, one of the nurses suggested that we bring in swatches of fabric to leave in Henry's isolette to get his smell on them. Then, she suggested bringing the swatches home so that our animals can get used to Henry's smell. Hopefully, this will make the transition a bit easier for them.

I headed over to the hospital around 10:30PM. Jeff had talked to Kathy before I left. When I got to the hospital, Henry was swaddled and looked content. I did his cares shortly after 11PM. He wasn't due for cares until midnight, but I wanted to hold him, so we did them early. I continued to be way off on my guesstimates of his diaper weight. I guessed 4 grams. I can't remember what it was exactly, but it was in the teens (17 grams, I think). The Lasix sure did its work this time. He shouldn't be getting a dose tomorrow, so I would suspect that the diapers will be much lower in weight. His shape is looking better. He no longer has the double chin that he had yesterday. And, his leg looks good. It was nice seeing his face without his scalp IV party hat. I was able to put my hand on the top of his head.

After cares, I did almost two hours of skin-to-skin with Henry. It took a little while to get him settled. He was having a bit of trouble getting into a comfortable position. He had a few bradys, but they didn't last long , and he got himself out of them without stimulation on my end. I doubt they'd be classified as true bradys because they were very short. I fell asleep a few times, until his alarms woke me up from the quasi-bradys. All in all, it was a relatively quiet night in the NICU. Overall, the alarms weren't going off much for the other babies either (or I'm just getting so used to them, I no longer hear them). It was a nice crew in Henry's pod tonight. The other nurses were Lisa, Jenny, and Marcie (all of whom have taken care of Henry at some point). They occasionally chatted, but the volume level was low, which was excellent.

Kathy asked me when the last time Henry had a bath was. I told her that I wasn't aware that he'd ever had a bath (aside from a sponge bath). I suspect that a bath is in Henry's near future. I can't imagine how that's done with all of the various wires that he's hooked to.

In other news, I noticed that a few babies have been switched from red status to green status on the board. That's nice to see. One of the nurses stopped by Henry's isolette last week to say that she'd found Henry a girlfriend, a 23.5-weeker who was born at 570 grams just like Henry. I was never told the little girl's name but I think that the nurse who stopped by was the baby's primary. If I'm right, then Henry's girlfriend has been moved from purple to red. I think that red is considered slightly better than purple, so that is good news. And the little girl across from Henry's isolette was changed from red to green the other day, which is also good news.