April 26, 2011 - 52 Days Old

Sky and Jazzy with their Easter baskets

I hope everyone had a fun Easter. After church on Sunday, we colored some eggs and had an Easter egg hunt for Skylar and Jasmine. They loved it! The Easter Bunny brought them both Easter baskets that they found in the morning and they had a lot of fun with our Easter activities. This is the first Easter where Jasmine understood what was happening. She ran around the yard, competing with Sky for eggs and candy. Sky only found two more eggs and a little more candy than her. After they had found everything, we sat down and pigged out on Easter candy. It was really fun.



Holding my little guy



After our Easter egg hunt, Amaraa and I drove to the hospital to visit Aiden. He was still doing really well. Amaraa let me be the one to hold him. I really look forward to holding my little guy. Amaraa had been in quite a bit of pain Sunday, so she decided to take one of her prescription pain pills before we went to the hospital. She hasn't been taking pain meds for several weeks because over-the-counter medicines have been taking care of her pain. She became really nauseated and started throwing up while we were at the hospital. She did her best, but eventually we had to leave. As soon as we got home, she took her anti-nausea meds and was fine after that, but the poor girl was sure miserable for a while.

Yesterday was a busy day. We finally made it to the hospital in the afternoon and Aiden was still doing well. They increased his feedings to 21 mL on Sunday, but he still had a bit of undigested food in his stomach yesterday, so they held him at 21 mL. We had Skylar and Jasmine with us, so we had to just take turns watching the kids while the other one went in to see Aiden.

Aiden is still doing well today. We just visited him. They are weaning him off of the pressure on the ventilator (it's now at 9) and the neonatologist increased his feedings to 24 mL every 3 hours. His tummy is still looking good and his residual amounts (the undigested food) are less today. The doctor said that once they can get his oxygen down consistently below 40% and his ventilator pressure down to 7, they will extubate him and try him on the nasal cannula again. It's almost unbelievable that he's doing so well. He has been sick for so long. The little guy's definitely a fighter.

It finally hit Amaraa today that we have three kids. With Aiden in the hospital, it almost seems like we live two separate lives -- one with Aiden at the hospital, and one with Skylar and Jasmine at home. It's difficult to put those two lives together sometimes. We feel so blessed to have three beautiful, wonderful kids. Our family feels complete. I am so excited for the day we can take a healthy Aiden home and merge these two lives of ours for good.