Week 4

Hi Again.  Every week I think that not much will happen the following week but every week they surprise me!

At the start of the week, the doctors told us that Jack may have a partially collapsed lung - not quite so drastic as it sounds and far less of a problem than it would be for an adult.  Still, he needs some assistance with breathing at the moment - they will keep him on CPAP though as going back to a vent tube would be a big backward step - they want him to work hard!  Over the course of the week he has got steadily better and even though he is still not as stable as Ella, he's still doing pretty well.

They did their echo cardiogram to check for a PDA - this is the hole in the heart that all unborn babies have and they want to make sure this closes by itself in prematures - sometimes they need medication or even surgery.  They in fact only had to do the echo on Ella as they could actually hear that Jacks PDA had already closed!  The one thing he is beating his sister at!  Ella still has a small-moderate PDA that they expect will close by itself.

Ella Graduated to the slightly less intensive care room on Tuesday - this was a pretty big thing for us.  This means that she is fairly stable and doesn't need to be in the highest care category.  She continues to put on weight and is now up to 1.112 kg.

Then I finally got to hold Jack on Wednesday which was pretty amazing.  Every time we have gone to hold him, he has 'played up' so it was fantastic to hold him like that. 

My Boy

Relaxed!

He obviously liked it as Anthea got to hold him the next day.  There's something to be said for kangaroo care as it's called - that afternoon Jack graduated to the same room Ella was in.  For the first time we had our babies together!  Jack also made it past the kilo mark, coming in at 1.055 kg.



Our three Angels togather at last!  Ella on the left, then Jessie in the middle and Jack on the right

















They did the 4 week head scan (ultrasound) to check for bleeds etc and both babies still have no bleeds - brilliant news!  Jack has a mild case of what they call 'ventricular asymmetry' which I'm told by itself is not clinically significant but they will keep an eye on it.

More photos below;

Ella close up

Ella's label

Ella looking cute

Jack just hanging out and chillin'



Jack's label