BIG WEEKEND, THEN MINOR SET-BACK

On Saturday, Meatball was finally allowed to eat again. He snarfed down the teensy and meager 4mL that were made available to him. Then, he made some absolutely adorable sighing noises and a great big burp. His feeding amounts increased by 1mL every three hours.

On that same day, Peanut was moved from an incubator into an open crib. He has proven that he can maintain his body temperature and is now a candidate for heading home! He passed his hearing test today and will take his car-seat test tomorrow. If he continues to gain weight each day, he will be headed home on Thursday.

Meatball was really fussy yesterday and didn't have any interest in eating. Since he spent so much time being off of food, the doc ordered an x-ray to make sure that his system is correctly handling the re-introduction of food. The x-ray was questionable with a big area of bowel that looks like it's not moving stuff along well. So, he's on a 12-18 hour fast (again) with 6-hour x-rays to monitor everything. It's probably nothing, but it's best to be cautious. He was also retaining a lot of fluid in his feet and legs, but that's pretty much cleared itself up today.

So, Peanut will beat Meatball home, but they should only be apart for a few (4-6) days. This will cause mommies some stress and some scheduling challenges since Peanut cannot re-enter the NICU. (No kids under 1 year.... risk of communicable infections is too great)

Regardless of the challenges we've experienced, we are so happy with our decision to become moms. Maybe it's the "baby-moon" period, maybe it's the fact that we have 24-hour help in the NICU staff, but honestly - we can't even remember our life before our guys came into it. Perhaps someday we'll look wistfully back on the parties, the dinners out, the movies, the bars, the dancing, and the sex-any-time-any-where - but today, none of that stuff matters.

We're also so very appreciative that our little men are as healthy as they are and that they waited until 34 weeks to arrive. There are so many kids in the NICU who are 1/4 the size of our Peanut and 1/7 the size of our Meatball (current sizes - not birth weight).

These three weeks in the NICU have opened our eyes and our hearts.