As we close out another year I wanted to give an update on our crew: Micah continues to do fabulous! We are so blessed with the wonderful progress he is making. At this point, you would never know that he was considered a "preemie" baby! At 5 weeks old he weighs 7 lbs. 7 oz. and continues to grow rapidly! We are still not getting him out of the house much these days as the flu, RSV and other respiratory illnessess can be very dangerous for him. He has had some congestion which has caused this mama a little panic and to take a couple of extra trips to the doc to check his lungs...which thankfully have been just fine so far. In his short 5 weeks of life, he has only been to the doctor, Nini & G-Pa's and MiMi and Grandy's. It makes things a little more difficult having to be home so much but we want to be as safe as possible with our little man as he is still maturing those lungs. He is just now starting to have more awake time during the day and it's so fun to see him scanning the room as he is trying to figure out life around him! One little interesting fact about Micah is that his umbilical cord didn't fall off until he was 5 weeks old. Typically, a cord will fall off in 2-3 weeks. We were told that in preemie babies it tends to take longer and in the NICU his cord was used to place some IV's which may be another reason for the delay. But, as any new parent knows, you're not supposed to completely submerge and bathe your baby until this comes off. Needless to say this little stinky boy needs a bath...and we're looking forward to sharing those first bath pictures very soon!!
In a recent post, I mentioned that I had come down with mastitis. It was hard to get this under control and it took 3 different antibiotics to finally start feeling better. However, I was left with a breast abscess even after the symptoms seemed to be getting better. Unfortunately, all the antibiotics I was on were covering up these symptoms but began to return once I was off them. The only way to get rid of the abscess was through surgery. We learned this information on December 23rd. It was suggested to me that I come in the next day (Christmas Eve) to have this taken care of. As if the last few weeks haven't been emotional and crazy enough, the thought of being in the hospital was not how I wanted to spend our first Christmas as a family of 5. So, I chose to continue some antibiotics to keep my symptoms at bay, enjoy Christmas with all 3 of my baby boys and then have the surgery on Tuesday. Thankfully, it was a successful procedure. However, the recovery will be a little more difficult than I anticipated. The incision was left open so that it can heal from the inside out. This is to prevent another infection from occuring during healing. This way, it can constantly be cleaned out. A nurse comes to the house daily to clean the incision (about 1 inch long and 1.25 inches deep) and pack it with more gauze. I'm not sure how long it takes for a wound to heal in this manner but my hope is that it won't be long...as the cleaning/changing is a pretty painful process! I'm hoping to be back to normal very quickly and we look foward to finally being able to just enjoy life with our boys and find our new routine!
A VERY special THANK YOU to Grandparents for stepping in and helping out so much!! Having a new baby is hard enough...adding 2 surgeries in a month on top of that has just about put this emotional, post-partum mommy over the edge! You are all such a blessing to me and I can't thank you enough for everything you've done to help out the last several weeks!!
And then there is my wonderful husband...who I could go on and on about how much he has done for our family, but I'll just stick with saying how blessed I am to be married to such a servant, who loves his family more than anything and is willing to put himself aside daily (actually hourly) to take care of all 4 of us! We Love You!!
I also want to say THANK YOU to all other family and friends who have prayed for us and encouraged us through calls, emails and texts!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
