Proud Parents

(pictures from Saturday night. The little blue sign was made by one of the great nurses in the NICU.)

We're moving along. Colby is 5 weeks old today. Tracey starts working again today. And it's now been two weeks since we lost Avery.

As you're all well aware, Colby has been through many ups and downs, but given his situation, he's doing well. The doctors are going to do another ultrasound today to check on his brain bleed. It usually takes a day to get the results back. We've got more feedback about his current brain bleed. It was a level 1/2 (level one on one side and level 2 on the other). The hydrocephalus had increased within his ventricles which made it all go to a level 3/3. The good news of this though is that his change from 2 to 3 is from increased hydrocephalus, not from increased bleeding.

Tracey has been out of work ever since she went into the hospital back on August 6th. So just about two months. She's been wanting to get back to work. It will be good for her to fall back into that routine. It will be good too to have another income coming in !!

It's hard to think that it's been two weeks since our little Avery passed away. It often feels much longer. Probably because of all that's been going on with Colby. But when I start to think about it, it still hurts as if it was yesterday.
Tracey and I were talking last night and it's amazing to think that our normal due date is still 65 days away! Colby and Avery would have still been in her belly for another two months! Wow! I can't even imagine that now. Tracey was getting so big at 5 months, I can't imagine how big she would have gotten had she gone full term. We still look to that date though because doctors usually shoot to have a preemie home for their normal due date. That's a target and by no means the rule. We'll have to see how Colby progresses.

I asked the doctor what "adjusted age" meant. In Colby's situation, he was born about 3 months and 2 weeks early. So many of the developmental milestones need to be pushed back as if he were born on December 5th. He was technically born on August 27th, however developmentally, the time he's in the NICU is meant to simply allow him to develop as if it here still inside Tracey. His real "milestone clock", if you will, doesn't start until December 5th. Thus, all his milestones will have an additional 3 months added to them. For example, if most children achieve a given milestone at 1 year 3 months, we might expect Colby to hit that when he's 1 year 6 months old. They use this adjusted age until about 2 or 3 years of age when most preemies are able to catch up to full term babies. Interesting, huh?