Weight
Over 5lbs each now. Aidan looks particularly chubby.
Breathing
Ethan was breathing without any assistance whatsoever until just recently when he contracted some sort of bacterial infection. They put his nasal cannula back on but it's on extremely low flow. It will likely come back off in a few days.
Aidan was on CPAP for quite a while. It was an awkward stage. Babies generally don't like CPAP. The apparatus has to be pressed up tight against the nose making it uncomfortable and the hose greatly restricts movement. Back when Ethan was on CPAP, he didn't like it but he was too small and weak to do anything about it. Aidan is now large enough and strong enough to be able to consistently (and constantly) tear away from the nose-piece. He doesn't understand that the only way to get rid of that nose-piece is to keep it on!
Fortunately, he's on nasal cannula since Feb 28. This marks the first time in a long time that we have 2 comparable pictures of the boys taken on the same day.
Misc
For a few days Ethan was removed from his incubator and placed in a bassinet wrapped in blankets. We were free to hold him as much as we wanted during visiting hours. We also got to try to bottle feed him. First time didn't go too well. But soon enough, he downed nearly half his bottle before tiring out.
On Feb 21, Ethan moved into another ward which is "less intensive" (as opposed to neonatal intensive care unit). But I guess he didn't like it there because his bowels became distended. As a result, he required multiple IVs inserted back into him. And they placed him back inside an incubator (probably because it's more convenient due to the imminent IV lines).
A doctor attempted to insert the IVs but was unsuccessful for over an hour. Ethan literally had wounds on multiple sites on each of his limbs from this. I had full intention on filing a complaint on this idiot, not for his incompetent skills, but for not requesting assistance after failing numerous times for over an hour and for keeping my boy cold outside his incubator during the whole time. A meeting with his supervisor calmed us down enough to have mercy on that moron.
But seriously, that imbecile just gives the paediatrics staff a bad name. If it were not for my wife insisting to spare him, I would end his medical career right now. Nonetheless, we passed our complaint letter privately to that idiot's supervisor for him to deal with it (as opposed to letting the hospital deal with it).
On Feb 22, they moved Ethan back to the ward he was in initially ie, the "intensive" ward. We're told he's alright and that it's just that he's probably too tired to poop. The NICU nurses shared with us a very odd observation regarding preemies. Most of the time, an infant would either be great at breathing and poor at digesting or great at digesting and poor at breathing. It's rare for a preemie to excel at both feats at the same time. This is certainly the case for our boys. Ethan has got the breathing part, but just not very good at the digestion. We're told Aidan digests everything they put down his feeding tube and poops just fine. But he's still working on the breathing part.
On Feb 27, Ethan had a mild fever and his eyes looked glassy. This means yet another spinal tap to rule out meningitis. This would be his 2nd one. Aidan has had 3 of them already.
There's not much news for Aidan other than he's progressing steadily. We actually would prefer if Ethan was just as newsworthy as Aidan is. In the NICU, no news is good news...
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