June 5, 2011 - 92 Days Old

This week has been a busy one. I was out of town for most of the week, so I didn't have time to post to the blog. Things have been going really well with Aiden this week. He is still making good progress. He was struggling with the lower flow rate on his cannula, so they increased it to 5 liters again and held him there all week last week. Yesterday, they turned him down to 4 liters again and so far he is doing well with that. The doctors don't plan on decreasing it any more for a while. That means that he won't be able to start trying to nurse for a while, but that's OK. The worst thing for him would be to push him too quickly and have him relapse because he isn't ready to be pushed that hard.

When I came back from Price on Friday night, I stopped by the hospital. Aiden's nurse, Becky, was holding Aiden and doing exercises with him to help him increase his neck, arm and leg strength. When I got there, she gave him to me and let me do the exercises with him. It was so fun. Now that he is a little older, he is able to interact with us a lot more. I had a great time. After the exercises, I bathed him and got him ready for bed.

Yesterday was Aiden's three-month birthday. There are three long-termers in the NICU now, and Aiden is the oldest. Every time he turns another month older, the nurses make a scrapbook page for him with his picture on it, wishing him a happy birthday. When we were over there today, they brought in his 3-month birthday scrapbook page. They moved him into a room within the NICU a couple of weeks ago, so when we are there, we can close the door and have some privacy. It is so nice and much quieter than when he was in the main area. He was in a room for about a week prior to his big setback, but while he was so sick, he had to be out in the main NICU area. We feel so blessed that he is doing so well now.

Wednesday was my birthday, but since I was in Price on Wednesday, we decided to wait until Saturday to celebrate. We visited Aiden in the morning and in the afternoon, we took the kids up to Mt. Timpanogos Park up Provo Canyon and played around. We played frisbee and catch, wrestled a little bit, and played tag. Later, we went to The Happy Sumo to eat. I had such a great time and it was an awesome birthday.

April 2, 2011 - 29 Days Old

Today, Aiden is showing some signs of improvement. His lungs are still looking good. The x-rays of his lungs are still pretty cloudy with infiltrates, but there are no major collapsed areas as there were before. They have been turning down the support levels on the breathing machine and he seems to be tolerating the reduced help pretty well. His tummy looks a little better, too. There's still a lot of air in there, but his belly girth measurements have been slowly decreasing for the past two days. That's encouraging. They turned off the suction through the Anderson tube, the tube running down into his bowel trying to drain off the excess air. It is now only draining by gravity. When they have tried that before, his tummy immediately blew up again, but it seems to be working OK so far this time. I went out of town for work yesterday and visited Aiden tonight as I was on my way home. I got there just after the nurses bathed him. I was able to lift him up as they changed his linens and took his weight. He has been very swollen and puffy over the past few days from all of the fluids they have been giving him, but some of that swelling is coming down. I don't know if they gave him lasix or if he is just getting rid of it on his own, but his weight was 2092 grams on Thursday, 2085 yesterday, and 1992 (4.5 lbs.) tonight. I never thought I would be happy that my preemie was losing weight, but in Aiden's case, that's a good thing right now.

Today was the start of April General Conference. The morning session this morning was just what we needed. Every talk seemed to have been written just for us. Elder Kent Richards, Elder Quentin Cook, and President Henry Eyring gave talks that were particularly timely and meaningful to me. Elder Richards, a retired surgeon, spoke about pain and shared the story of a 13 year-old girl and an experience she had following a serious surgery. His words were very comforting to both Amaraa and I. As Elder Cook spoke about the women of the church and President Eyring spoke about service and caring for those in need, I couldn't help but think of all of the wonderful Relief Society sisters in our ward that have been so thoughtful and kind to us throughout the past several months. One of many examples of this happened on Friday as I was getting ready to go out of town. I checked the mail and found an envelope with Amaraa's name on it. Inside was a card from a sister in our ward. She shared a favorite scripture and wrote words of comfort and encouragement. Amaraa had been having a particularly difficult time emotionally and the card was just what she needed. This sister knew that Aiden had been struggling, but did not know that Amaraa was having such a hard time. She was simply prompted by the Spirit and she listened to that prompting. I can't begin to express how grateful I am to her and all of the other people who have been so supportive and thoughtful. We feel so blessed to have the friends and the family that we have.