Day #35 5 Weeks Old TODAY!!!

Sleepy

YEAH!!! 5 weeks

loves his nuk

Awww, daddy loves his little man

Yeah, Our monkey is 5 weeks old today. I can't believe it, wow 5 weeks. He weighed in at 4lbs 4oz tonight. I can't believe that he has nearly doubled his weight. He is getting so big.

Today, the OT lady came to give him a eval. She said that he is doing really well. He has a strong suck reflex and his muscle tone and flexsion is great. Whew!!! Who am I kidding I wasn't worried at all, he is AWESOME!!!! Trey has a fighting spirt just like his mommie. No matter how tough thing look for us we will over come it with a smile on our faces.

So, as some know and others may not Trey is not having any visitors except for Chris and I right now. I am sure that this decision has made some people upset but I have to be honest I am not sorry. The doctors and I came to a decision that we felt was best for my son and that is my job as a parent. To make the best decisions for my son. At-any-rate, I am choosing to explain our decision here so that I can calmly explain myself in a organized manner.

1st and foremost my sons health is at the top of my priority list right now. The doctors were afraid that he was being exposed to too many people. Trey had a bad day where he had 16 brady episodes. The doctors didn't know if they were due to over stimulation or an infection. They have to expect the worse because an infection can kill a preemie in a matter of hours. So, Trey had to be put on 5 days of antibiotics for the MRSA and he was given blood. The decision to place a preemie on antibiotics cannot be taken lightly. The potential side effect can range from organ failure to hearing loss to sepsis. So, they mentioned to me to limit visitors in the hope of limiting his exposure to possible infections. I decided that instead of telling people not to visit that I would ask for people to call me first to make sure it was okay on the perticular day. During this conversation with the doctors they also discussed over stimulation.

It was brought to my attention that there were times when he had visitors and he began to brady afterwards. They believed that it was due to over stimulation. Over stimulation for a preemie can be caused by many things, noise, smells, touching, lights basically you name it. We are couched very heavily by the nurses, doctors, OT and PT about these things and many other issues. Choking, how to bring him out of a brady or apnea spell, how to deal with his many wires. Most visitors haven't and to be honest you don't want the stress of knowing that his little life could be in your hands.

So, I asked to be called before anyone visited him and explained why. I was told that this wasn't a problem and was actually a good idea. I fully expected to get a phone call before visits were made anymore. Well, there were visits made and an absence of a phone call. I was pretty mad. It isn't hard to pick up a phone and there are a hundred reason why he may not need visitors that particular day. I had already explained this once. I felt like not calling to ask if it was okay to visit was a blatant disregard for the health of my son. He may look perfectly healthy but he isn't. He has a compromised immune system, thin skin, hooked up to O2, MRSA blah blah.

So, I understand if there are people that are upset with me but put yourselves in my shoes. What would you do? How would you handle worrying every night and day if you might get a phone call that your son took a turn for the worse. What if you got that phone call and KNEW you could have done something to prevent it, something as simple as limiting visitor. So it is okay to be mad at me now because I promise you will thank me later when he is big and healthy and all the drama of the NICU is a distant memory.