The last 11 days

So I can provide you all with up-to-date information on gorgeous little Jensen, this post will be a summary of the past 11 days. From tomorrow I will post a daily photograph and update on his progress.
Since Jensen's arrival he has had ups and downs, been prodded and poked by nurses and doctors who are constantly changing his drips, tubes, testing his blood, oxygen levels, blood pressure, giving him X-rays, and scans, cleaning his face, and changing his nappy, taking his temperature, dressing his wound, giving him blood transfusions, putting his sunglasses on, and a lot of other things I just don't ask about. He is now being fed through a line in his arm, has another in his foot, and today has had his antibiotic drip line removed from his other arm. These lines were all initially in his belly button and after a week need to be moved. My placenta was also used to give him what he needed upon birth. So having these splints on his arms are going to make him a muscle man, as he throws them about as if they aren't even there. All of these procedures sound frightening, but they all part of the day in the life of a preemie baby, especially one as little as our Jensen.

Put 'em up...put 'em up

The nurses comment on how well he takes to handling as this can be quite distressful for preemies and this shows in their oxygen levels, blood pressure and so on. Our little man is such a strong, determined little fella and loves keeping the doctors and nurses happy...as well as mummy and daddy of course.
The wound I mentioned previously is a burn on his right thigh which occurred when he had his vitamin K injection after his birth. His skin was cleaned with an alcohol wipe before the injection, which disintegrated his skin as it was so paper thin, actually rice paper thin. None of his nurses had ever experienced this before, nor known of this happening in all their years of nursing. The burn doctors have been monitoring it, and today are very happy with it, as it is healing nicely. This is the reason Jensen was on morphine. The doctors and nurses believed him to be in pain from the wound, so he was put on morphine and gradually weened off it each day. During this time, his respiratory assistance was increased as he was too zonked out to be bothered with initiating many breaths on his own.

Jensen has proven to be quite the popular little man, with many visitors from friends and family and constant phone contact with those that can't be here. We joke that Matthew and Emma who had come from England for a visit were just hoping to a feel of a kick from inside my tummy, yet actually got to meet him and spend many, many hours with him before their long journey home. We have so much love, support, and positive energy around us, I want Jensen to feel as loved as he is and that everyone has so much positive energy out there for him.

I have now started to do his 'cares', as it is called, which is to clean his face, ears, mouth, and underarms, change his nappy and take his temperature. I am not too confident with feeding him his milk just yet, as I don't trust myself to be gentle enough with the syringe it is administered through, but that will come with time I guess. He has started back on breastmilk today after a short break. Previously, he wasn't digesting the milk properly due to some bleeding and infection in his tummy. That has since cleared up and he is again enjoying mummy's milk. Luckily for me, at the moment he is just taking 1ml four hourly, which quickly increased to 2mls, as he was tolerating it so well (and enjoys food like his mummy so it seems). This will give mummy a bit more time to work on her expressing technique and volume!

Two days ago he did his first little poo...the tiniest one you've ever seen, on the same day he had a little tear in his eye and had sprouted out some new eyelashes (his eyes are still fused together as they would be in the womb, and should open in the next couple of weeks). The tear in his eye is a sign his eyes are on the way to opening. He tries his little hardest bless him, he wiggles his eyes around a lot when we talk to him and moves his eyebrows up and down. I think he just wants to put a face to a name you know, and it appears his nature is quite inquisitive and impatient if his birthday is anything to go by!

Last night Jensen had a scan of his lungs to check the progress of them separating. This is something Phil understands more about, but as he is so premature, his lungs are still one and haven't yet separated into two. The line that divides them has increased from 1mm to 2.8mm so they are getting there. This is being monitored by the doc to see if they work themselves out over time, as full term babies have developed this already by birth. He has also had a scan on his heart and brain. The brain scan showed no bleeding on his brain, which is a possibility with the amount of bruising he had, and quite common in preterm babies. The scan on his heart showed that his valves were now even. Last scan showed that one was 4mm and the other 1mm. This meant that blood was being pumped in easily and out harder due to the unevenness of the valves. He will continue to have scans on a weekly basis to check his progress.
Our little Jensen has the undivided attention of many lovely nurses. He has a nurse with him 24 hours with three shifts throughout the day. They all comment on how big he is for his age (30.2cm). He weighed in at 690 grams last night. He was just 633g at birth, and has fluctuated since then. Some even joke about the size of his hands and feet, and had he gone to term he would have been massive. The nurses understood why he had such big hands and feet upon meeting daddy and Uncle Matthew.
The next post will mainly be photographs, as there are so many and hard to put in order, just so we can catch up to where he is at present... But I'll leave you with just one more from today.

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