They say life imitates art, and I know medical dramas are all the rage, but I never expected to be living one! Fortunately, the daily ups and downs have been fairly minor lately, and I'd say the week as a whole was more or less a wash.
Bryce is still healthy, but Logan sounds like he's coming down with a cold, and even if we were both home every day, I can't imagine how we're going to be able to keep his germs from spreading throughout the house. Ironically, we're fairly sure he picked it up at the doctor's office; Bryce had an appointment on Wednesday, and Logan was crawling up the walls in a waiting room filled with sick kids. C'est la vie.
Bryce's speech/feeding therapist had some especially encouraging things to say about his development after observing all the smiling and cooing he does when people interact with him. However, his tremendous growth spurt seems to be petering out; after several weeks of gaining an average of 1.5 oz. per day, he's dropped to about 0.5 oz per day this week. That's not terrible, but given our fear of future growth/feeding issues, we liked it a lot better when he was in the right-hand tail of the preemie growth bell curve.
The biggest medical news of the week is that Bryce passed a hearing test in both ears! I guess the old cliche is wrong; for Bryce, the fourth time's the charm. As a consequence, they've decided to cancel his ABR hearing test for the time being, which is especially good because they have to anesthetize infants for the ABR.
Finally, I wanted to let everyone (but especially our preemie parent followers) know about a documentary, called Little Man, which was on Showtime (and is available from Netflix). The movie is about a one pound 25-weeker, named Nicholas, who had an especially turbulent entry into this world. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I recommend the movie, but it did evoke smiles and tears from both Christie and I. A great deal of time is dedicated to the ethical and family dilemmas associated with micro-preemies, and I found it hard to get through the first twenty five minutes. Though Nicholas had a longer and tougher NICU stay than Bryce, most of the medicine looked all too familiar. It's definitely not date-night material, as this micro-preemie Mommy doesn't pull any punches, but if you're interested in a realistic documentary of the challenges of NICU life and raising a micro-preemie at home, I'm guessing this movie is one of a kind. Print this post
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