The Nutcracker

Clara was very insistant this morning that she wanted to bring her ballet clothes to the hospital so that she could put on a show for the three boys. And it was quite a show indeed. It was the first time in recorded history that The Nutcracker was performed inside the Special Care Nursery at Stanford.

The three boys continue to do really well...

Tighe's appetite for food is becoming legendary. He is the guy that every nurse wants to look after. Whereas most babies take 20-30 minutes to feed, Tighe is done in about 3-5 minutes. His facial expressions are also very interesting. He is the closest to returning to his birth weight, now just 2.5% below it and already on the way back up. He is still inside the isolette/incubator. This is to help him maintain/regulate his body temperature. I'm not convinced he really needs this anymore but they are being very conservative/cautious. The big advantage of the incubator is that the babies don't have to work much or spend much energy to keep their body temperature up. This helps them maintain and grow their weight.

Cian is also an interesting character. He too is eating well. He is 7.0% below his birthweight but also above his lowest recorded weight and on the upslope. All three are on monitors which check

1. Heart Rate

2. Respiration Rate

3. Oxygen Saturation.

One of the funny things about Cian is that as he gets closer to his feed time you can see his heart rate creep up and up. He starts from a content 125 bpm, then rises slowly over about 20 minutes to 200 bpm. At this point he starts to cry and then hits the 225 bpm before he gets changed and fed. He is also in the incubator still, but again is very close to coming out.

Michael had a really great day today. The doctors had been saying over the last day or two that they were concerned about his weight drop (now down 8.4%) and were thinking of fortifying his milk. He had been averaging less than 30ml per feeding whereas Cian and Tighe were up in the 50ml range. And Michael was throwing up more than the other two as well. In addition they suspect he is suffering from reflux (acid surge from his stomach back up into his throat) as they noticed he is scrunching and holding his breath sometimes when he is eating or shortly afterwards. I fed Michael at 8am this morning and again at 11am. After each feeding I held him for over and hour in an upright position to see if it helped the reflux. I'm not sure if it helped but he took 35 and 38ml and didn't spit up at all. Then later today he took over 40ml from Marge. I don't know if holding him upright helped, but there was certainly a corner turned today and we are hopeful that Michael really starts to gain weight from now. The other interesting thing is that

Michael is the only one of the three who has not been in an incubator. He manages to regulate his body temperatur very well, but this is probably another reason why he has lost more weight, the extra energy to do this unassisted.

Gigi also made very good progress today. She had much more pep in her step and had to take far less pain medication than in recent days. She's doing a great job with the nursing also.

Still no firm date on when they will come home. Honestly, if they told us tomorrow morning that we could take them home, I'd be very comfortable doing that.

We're looking forward to seeing Jennifer, Mike and Giuseppe Criscuolo tomorrow. Jennifer is currently on her annual trip from the east coast to see her family in Healdsburg and has extended her trip by a week so that she can stay and help Gigi out. Mike needs to get back to the east coast as he has a try out for the New York Mets on Monday. They've been struggling with pitching so far this season and Mike is getting a chance after throwing 5 perfect games in his Wednesday night league.