November 18, 2011 - 258 Days Old

Wow, I can't believe how much time has passed since I last wrote. My new job and school has me so busy that the days pass way too quickly. A couple of people who are regular followers of the blog have contacted us and asked if we are alright, so I figured it was probably time to post again.

Our little Aiden has been fighting off sickness for about the past month and a half. He caught a cold from his brother and sister and it took him a long time to get over it. Then, just as he was getting over it, Skylar and Jasmine generously passed along yet another cold. I swear, Skylar is like a walking petrie dish! He gives it to Jasmine and then she promptly coughs or sneezes in Aiden's face. We do our best to keep them away from Aiden when they are sick, but they sneak in while we aren't watching and pass their germs along. Aiden struggles so much with colds because his immune system is so weak and it takes him a long time to get better.

Aiden is still on oxygen. His breathing doesn't seem to be getting much better. Hopefully he will gradually improve and we can get him off of oxygen before long.

Halloween was fun for the kids this year. Skylar dressed up as Iron Man and Jasmine was a butterfly. They were so cute. I dressed up in my typical Halloween costume, my traditional Mongolian clothing, for our work Halloween party. Amaraa brought Skylar and Jasmine to trick-or-treat around the office and then they had cupcakes and drinks. I took the kids around our neighborhood trick-or-treating. They were so excited. They tired out after only a handful of houses and wanted to go home, so that suited me fine. We still accumulated quite a lot of candy that we had to promptly ration to prevent rotten teeth.

Skylar has really been enjoying school this year. He loves his teacher and comes home saying he had a great day at school every day. Jasmine still misses him when he goes to school, but I think she is getting used to the idea. We have our little morning ritual we go through. Jazzy eats breakfast with Sky and I and sees us off to work and school. She then takes her warm milk in a sippy cup and goes downstairs to watch the latest episode of Sesame Street. She is at such a cute age, but she can be a "terrible two".

Work has been okay. I am still looking for other opportunities that are a better fit for me, but until I find one, at least I enjoy the work I am doing. It's not ideal by any means, but it is a job and I am grateful to have it for now.

Amaraa and I have both caught the cold the kids have had and it has been miserable. Luckily, it affected me pretty lightly, but the dry throat and coughing has not exactly been pleasant in a job where I have to be on the phone all the time. Amaraa has been hit much harder with her cold.

Well, I'll try to be better about writing on the blog. If you hear of any great job opportunities, send them my way.

September 15, 2011 - 194 Days Old

Well, today has been a crazy day. I am into the groove of things at work and have started consulting with my clients. That has been going pretty well so far. I'm grateful that my supervisors are letting me start off slow. Normally, I would have about 55 customers to work with each week, but I only have about eleven right now. I'm sure they will give me more soon, but I'm glad I am able to ease into it.

After work, I went to my two on-campus classes at UVU. Both of my teachers are really good, but it makes for really long days. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I leave the house at 7:30 AM and get home at about 9:00 PM. While I was in class, I got a text from Amaraa that said she didn't think Aiden's baby formula was working for him. We have been giving Aiden preemie baby formula a couple of feedings per day to help him gain weight. The Enfamil for preemies has been working really well, but today Amaraa got some Similac formula from WIC. I texted back that I would pick up some more Enfamil on my way home.

I had no idea what had been going on that prompted the text message...

Amaraa mixed the new formula for Aiden early in the afternoon. After giving it to him, Aiden got a lot of phlegm in his throat. He started coughing and couldn't clear the mucus. A few minutes later he threw up. With all of the phlegm in his throat, throwing up just aggravated the problem, and everything seemed to get caught in his throat. He started choking and couldn't breathe. Amaraa turned him face-down and slapped his back to try to clear the garbage out of his throat. Aiden started turning blue and his monitor was alarming as his blood oxygen saturation began to drop. After trying everything she knew how to do to get him breathing again, she finally called 911. She kept working on Aiden as she waited for the ambulance. Aiden began doing a little better and his color started to improve. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was breathing much better. The EMTs wanted to take him to the hospital, but Amaraa wouldn't let them. By then, he was breathing normally again and was not in distress. The EMTs were worried because his breathing appeared labored, but Amaraa knew that was normal for Aiden due to his reactive airway disease. She explained that to them and they left. The ordeal was pretty scary for Skylar and Jasmine. Amaraa apparently handled it like a pro. I didn't find out about all of this until I got home from school. Anyway, everything is OK and Aiden is doing well tonight.

Well, that's about all the excitement for today. Here's hoping for a little less excitement in coming days.

September 11, 2011 - 190 Days Old

I haven't posted for a while. I have been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks. I started a new job and I started school, so I don't have a lot of extra time.

Aiden is doing well. He picked up a cold from his generous older brother and it has been a rough couple of weeks with some pretty scary moments. With the lung problems he has, a cold could be fatal, so we were pretty nervous. Fortunately, he seems to be mostly over it now. He is finally sleeping better, and that makes us all happier. Amaraa still has to spend most of every day by his bedside, which I'm sure isn't easy for her. Aiden has been home for more than a month. He's six months old now.

As I mentioned above, I started a new full-time job. It started as an entry-level customer service position at Crexendo Business Solutions, but after being there for four days, I was promoted to Account Manager. I found the job listing on Monster.com and applied from there. When I went in for the interview, I found out that the interviewer was a girl from my ward! Anyway, my job is to work with business owners to create and optimize their business websites so they show up on the first page of Google searches. I have loved it so far. The account manager position is very similar to what I did as a consultant with insurance agents -- helping them to establish a web presence and utilizing Web 2.0 to increase business and traffic for them. I have been in training for the past couple of weeks. Training is now over and I will begin working with clients this week.

I also started school again. I am taking two online courses and two evening classes on campus. My teachers seem to be good although the classes themselves are not my idea of a good time. Skylar started school, too. Last year, we sent him to a charter school in American Fork, but this year we decided to send him to an elementary school a block and a half from our home. We have heard good things about the school and it will be much more convenient for us. He loves his teacher and is doing well in his new environment. He loves being able to ride his bike to and from school with his friends from our neighborhood. Jasmine really misses having him at home during the day. I think Amaraa misses having him home to help with Jazzy, too.

Well, I'll try to be more consistent with writing. Hopefully as I get into the groove of the new job and school, I will be able to find the time to write more.

Back to the Hospital...and Then Home Again - 162 Days Old

We've had a concerning week with Aiden this week. During the nights while he was sleeping, his heart rate would drop down so low that it would make his monitor alarms go off. This started happening a few times a night and then got progressively worse. Usually, the rate would only stay low for a few minutes, and then pop back up to where it should be. As the week went on, this started happening more and more often. One time, the rate stayed low for about thirty minutes. I was out of town and it scared Amaraa. She called the NICU and asked them what she should do. They suggested she turn up the oxygen flow rate a little bit and that would cause the heart rate to stay up. She tried that and the problem seemed to get a little better. They told her that she should take Aiden to the Emergency Room if this continued to happen. He seemed more fussy than usual, wasn't eating very well, and seemed uncomfortable. I thought the heart rate issue could be a problem with the monitor, but we weren't sure. We felt like we needed to have him checked out. When I came home from Price on Saturday, we hopped in the car and took him up to the ER at Primary Children's. We arrived at the hospital at around 4:00 PM. They checked him over and ran some tests. They gave him an Albuterol breathing treatment and he calmed down. They monitored him for a while and told us they would like to admit him and watch him overnight. There wasn't a bed available, so we ended up sitting in the ER until about 9:45 PM. On the hospital monitors, his heart rate and oxygen saturation levels looked great. When they found a room for us, we hooked him back up to our monitor for the trip upstairs. About a minute after I hooked him up, the heart rate dropped down low and the alarm started sounding. We hadn't moved him yet. He was calm. He didn't seem to be distressed. His oxygen saturation levels were still fine. I couldn't believe that it could be an accurate reading when he had been holding steady on the hospital monitors for the last five hours. We went upstairs the the Children's Surgical Unit and were admitted into a room.

The room had a crib, a chair that folded out into a short bed, and a rocking chair. Amaraa and I both decided to stay with Aiden overnight. Unfortunately, the fold-out chair would only accommodate one person. I tried my best to find a comfortable position on the rocking chair, but finally gave up. I spread out a blanket on the floor and slept there. What a miserable night! I only slept about three hours and woke up with a migraine. When the morning finally rolled around, the nurses and doctors came in to do their rounds. They had monitored Aiden all night and said he didn't have any episodes of bradychardia (the heart rate drops). They said he looked really good on the monitors all night. One of the nurses said they were going to move us to a different room sometime today. They kept talking like we were going to be staying another night. Amaraa and I decided to run home to Lehi to grab some necessities in preparation for another night. When we got home, I took a quick shower, we grabbed what we needed, and headed back toward the hospital. When we got back, we saw the nurse still holding Aiden in his room. She said he wouldn't let her put him down except for about fifteen minutes when he fell asleep. She also said that the doctors had decided they were going to discharge Aiden. We were really happy.

Ready to get out of the hospital...again.

The doctor came in about a half hour later and told us that Aiden looked great. She said he had been solid as a rock overnight and hadn't shown any signs of bradychardia. They had run virus panels and other tests that all came back negative. They had done a blood gas test and a chest x-ray, and both of those came back right in line with the ones that had been done before he was discharged from the NICU. He had two echo cardiograms while he was in the NICU and those both showed that there were no structural problems with his heart. The doctor was positive that the problem was the monitor and not a problem with Aiden. She recommended that we discontinue use of the monitor entirely. I told her I wasn't comfortable doing that yet, but that we would disregard the heart rate monitor part of it. I want to continue monitoring his oxygen saturation levels because the monitor will alert us if the cannula comes out of his nose, if an oxygen tank runs out of oxygen, etc. She said it is possible to set the monitor to only alarm on the oxygen saturation side, and not on the heart rate side.

As soon as we finished talking to the doctor, we received Aiden's discharge papers and we went downstairs to the car. We were really happy that we didn't have to stay any longer. I wasn't looking forward to another night on that hard floor. Of course, we were mostly excited to find out that there was nothing wrong with our little guy. It was reassuring to find out that he was doing well after being home for a couple of weeks.

In my last post, I mentioned the Torgerson family reunion that we had last weekend. While I was there, I found out that my cousin, Alynn, is somewhat of a celebrity. She is a food blogger and has been on Studio 5 on KSL. I checked out her blog and everything on it looks really yummy. Her blog is called "Meals 4 Moms" and you can find it by clicking here. The whole idea of the blog is to "help moms spend less time in the kitchen and more time with the ones they love." Check it out. Bookmark it. Visit it often. It's definitely worth your while.

August 9, 2011 - 157 Days Old

It's nice to have "En-ay" home

Well, Aiden has been home for a week now. It has been a week of adjusting. Aiden is adjusting to his new surroundings, a new bed, new toys, etc. We are adjusting to his 24-hour care, giving his medications and treatments, having his monitor alarms go off every two seconds, not getting much sleep, etc. We are thrilled to finally have him home, though. It's so nice not to have to drive for an hour to see him. For the most part, he has done really well at home. He still requires a lot of care, but hopefully as he grows older, he will get easier and easier to care for. We are still trying to get used to all of the new noises. Aiden's oxygen concentrator (the piece of equipment that makes oxygen for him from room air) is quite loud. It also creates a lot of heat, so I had to install a ceiling fan to keep from having to freeze out the rest of the house just to keep our room at a reasonable temperature.

I've been applying and interviewing for jobs for the last couple of weeks. I've had two interviews so far. I feel like they have gone well. I hope to find something before school starts.

We had a family reunion for my Torgerson side on Saturday. I went and took Skylar and Jasmine with me. It was a really great time. We haven't had a family reunion on that side of the family since the mid-90's. I haven't seen a lot of my cousins for a really long time. One of them I hadn't seen since I was just a little kid. It was neat to be able to get reacquainted with them and meet their families. Since we can't take Aiden around crowds or kids, Amaraa stayed home with him. Everyone asked about them and wondered how they were both doing. I really missed having them there, but we planned another reunion for next year, so hopefully by then our family will all be well enough to attend.

I took Skylar and Jasmine swimming last night for FHE. We had a really fun time. It has been way too long since we went swimming last. They both said they want to go again soon. The summer seems to be ticking by way too fast. Before long, Skylar and I will be in school and there won't be as much time to do things, so we're trying to pack it all in before school starts. Speaking of school, I registered Skylar for school today. We're going to send him to a different school this year. We liked his charter school, but we didn't feel like we would be able to meet the parental volunteer requirements this year with Aiden at home. We decided to send Skylar to an elementary school about two blocks away from our house. We have heard good things about the school from our neighbors, so I think it will work out better for us this year.

Homecoming - 148 Days Old

Just four days shy of his 5-month birthday, we were finally able to bring Aiden home today. It has been a long, nerve-wracking day, but we are finally all home. I can't believe it. It doesn't seem real yet.

We "roomed-in" the other night (a final requirement where parents stay at the hospital and take care of their baby unaided for a 24-hour period). Unfortunately, the room we stayed in only had a hard, uncomfortable fold-out couch and a hard, uncomfortable recliner for us to sleep on. Aiden had to be hooked up on two monitors, the one we were bringing home with us and the one the nurse could monitor remotely from outside the room. The nurse's monitor wasn't supposed to be on because they try to replicate an actual home experience as closely as possible. Unfortunately, the nurse couldn't get her monitor to work unless she turned it on in the room. Our own monitor was fine, and only beeped a few times during the night when Aiden's oxygen saturation dropped down. The nurse's monitor, though, beeped about every two minutes. We would just be dozing off and it would beep and wake us up. At about 2 AM, I went in and talked to the nurse about it. She adjusted the sensitivity settings on her monitor. It still beeped too often, so since I had seen how she adjusted it, I adjusted it way down and solved that problem. Even though the beeping had stopped, though, it was still impossible for me to sleep on the uncomfortable recliner. Aiden did great, but we had a pretty miserable night.

Yesterday, when the new nurse came in after shift change in the morning, she asked us how long we were planning to stay. We told her that they had told us we had to be there until 4 PM. She said she didn't think we would have to stay that long. The nurse practitioner told us that she would probably send Aiden home Monday, so that's what we were planning on. This nurse, however, was talking like we not only wouldn't have to stay until 4 PM, but that we would be able to take Aiden home with us when we went home. We couldn't believe it. After checking with the nurse practitioner, she told us we didn't have to stay until 4 PM, but that they still had some blood tests to run on Aiden. She said they would draw the blood in the morning (today) and that we could take him home with us as soon as they were done. We ended up staying at the hospital until 2 PM and then we headed home to get ready for Aiden's homecoming. We cleaned the house from top to bottom, got Aiden's crib set up, and caught up on some much-needed sleep in preparation for our big day.

This morning, we got up and prepared a few last minute things and then drove to the hospital. We had to wait for the doctors to do their rounds, the nurse practitioners to write Aiden's prescriptions, the prescriptions to be filled at the hospital pharmacy, and the discharge papers to be explained, reviewed and signed. When the doctors rounded, they made it very clear that Aiden is still in a very fragile condition. He said we are not to take him to any public places and not to allow visitors into his room. They said we could take him outside, but not on days when the pollution levels are high. We have to keep him pretty isolated for quite a while. And once RSV season starts, we have to be even more cautious. So, it appears we're not out of the woods yet.

Leaving Primary Children's

It was about 4:15 PM by the time we were cleared to be discharged. The nurse practitioner gave us some last instructions and went over some final details. We said goodbye to all the doctors, nurse practitioners, and nurses. Then we loaded Aiden in the car seat, hooked him up to our travel oxygen tank and monitor, and headed downstairs. He fell asleep on the way down to the car, so it looked like we would have a pretty peaceful trip. We headed down the freeway and got to Lehi at about 5:00. Aiden slept for about half of the trip. When he woke up, he just peacefully stared at his mommy the rest of the way home. Skylar and Jasmine were really excited to see their little brother and finally have him home. My mom and dad had driven up from Price and were there waiting for us as well.

Petersen Medical came over shortly after we got home and set up an oxygen concentrator and a couple of extra oxygen tanks and cannulas. Aiden was pretty over-stimulated after all that had happened, but after things settled down a bit, he relaxed and fell asleep. What a day! Hopefully we'll have a relatively peaceful night.

Rooming In - 146 Days Old

Tonight is a big night for us. We are "rooming in" at Primary Children's. This is the last major requirement prior to taking Aiden home. We have to spend a night and a day at the hospital taking care of Aiden on our own, without the general help (but with the emergency backup) of the nurses. We have had to learn about how to use all of his monitors, medications, and oxygen equipment and we are using the equipment we will be taking home with us, in the room tonight. If everything goes well, he will be coming home very soon. We are very excited. So far, it's all a bit overwhelming, but I'm sure we'll get the hang of it as the night progresses. We have been waiting for this for a long time, but now that it's finally here, it's pretty stressful. I'll post again tomorrow and give a report on how we fared.