Jack Kaden

Sarah got sprung!!

Sarah got broken out of the hospital today, and it is with very mixed emotions that we leave. On the one hand I am very happy to have her out of there, but on the other, its heartbreaking to leave without our son.

One thing that is making it a bit easier is our temporary housing as provided to us by our friends David and Christina Lindberg (that’s CC Young to some of you). Tomorrow I’ll take a picture from the bedroom, but ’till then you’ll have to trust me -this place is friggin sweet!

I visited Jack at the hospital at about 9:00pm tonight and he is continuing to do well. He is eating some breastmilk, which is pretty exciting, and although he is still under the blue light which helps him with jaundice, things are going well. I left before they weighed him, but I’ll be able to report those numbers tomorrow.

Anyway, I took a few more snaps of his tiny hands and feet for all you fetishists out there…

Apparently, all babies lose weight after being born. Well, preemies are no different. Jack weighed 1001 grams when he was born, but on Tuesday he was down to 890 grams. Its normal for a preeemie to loose between 10% to 20% of their weight, so we weren’t too worried. He also broke the all important 1000 grams barrier which gives him a much better prognosis than many of the micro-preemies in the room with him.

They weigh him at the end of every day, at around 10:00pm. Today, we happened to be visiting him when it was going down. He came in a 908 grams, a slight increase from the day before, so we were psyched about that.

Now, he is nekked in this video, so don’t look if you have never seen any man-parts.

Also, you can really get an idea of just how tiny he is, notice Sarah’s hand is in the top of the frame.

Sarah edited to add: apparently all premature babies look like little old men. That’s what our boy looks like right now, an exceptionally cute old man.

I missed Sarah holding Jack for the first time early this morning. She got to hold him “skin to skin” or what they call Kangaroo Care for a few minutes.

Here are some pictures of what we did for the rest of the day.

This is where Jack hangs out all day.

This is the machine that measures how much oxygen he is getting from the CPAP

This is the main monitor that Jack is attached to.

The top line is his heart rate, his heart beats about twice as fast as an adult person, so 155 is totally normal.

The second line is the level of oxygen in his blood. the normal range here is in the mid 90’s. Its a little high here, so after I took this picture, they turned down the CPAP machine a tiny bit. That’s good because they will eventually want to ween him off of the CPAP totally, so the less help from it that he needs, the better.

The third line is the respiratory rate. That means breaths per minute. taking too many breaths per minute means that he is not able to get enough oxygen, but 55 is in the middle, and totally normal.

The Fourth line is blood presure, and it’s just fine too.

Today Jack also got to meet his first uncle, Uncle Jesse (not really). Jesse was on his way back from Wyoming to his year long stint in Ecuador and wanted to see his baby nephew before leaving for South America. Jack also met Victoria last night and Lucy tonight. He has a very busy social schedule.

Here is the Jack’s first you tube video, he’s wiggling a little bit.

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Today is going well so far. I guess the thing is, that if nothing bad happens, then it’s a good day. We spoke with Jack’s Dr. today and he says that Jack is doing better that expected. The thing that we are learning is that all of the Doctors and nurses end every sentence with …”for now”.

Like Jack is doing better than expected… FOR NOW. They also say that the road is a rocky one, and that there will be good day and bad.

I am a genius, and I forgot our camera at Amanda’s house, so no new pictures today. I realize that Jack already has adoring fans, and that fans demand pictures. So don’t fret, more pics are on the way.