Ethan's Trip Home

Here are few pics from Monday night! We're so happy to have Ethan home.

Katie in the elevator on our way up to Ethan's room.

This is Ethan in his car-seat. The hospital will not let babies go home from the NICU before they've passed a 90 minute car-seat trial. They do that to make sure that the baby handles the car-seat well, and the design doesn't cause them to have breathing issues.

We carried Ethan from the room down to the car, then this is another picture of him, in the car this time once we got him situated.

Home! We have Ethan in a bassinet next to the bed for easy access. I think we originally intended easy for us to access him, but Ethan decided that access worked both ways. Monday night he explained to us how much he appreciated that access until about 1:00 am. We've since figured out his schedule a little bit, and now are getting a reasonable amount of sleep.

We're really excited about having him home with us. I don't know how we'd be handling everything if he was still in Winnie Palmer, now that we're in New Smyrna Beach. Thank you all for praying for us, we'll continue to keep you updated!

- Ken

Coming Home!!!

Great new! Dr. Alexander told Katie today that he is planning on discharging Ethan on Monday! Unless Ethan gives us reason to pause, we're planning on that. Please pray for us this weekend. We will be combining moving with bringing our son home, so we're going to be very busy, and probably emotionally and physically exhausted.

Don't worry, I intend on having the camera close by on Monday. I'll probably not post anything until Monday late night or Tuesday morning.

- Ken

Memorial Day

Good Morning! Katie and I are up at the hospital with Ethan, and since she's feeding him, I figured I'd take a moment to give you our weekly update. (WITH pictures this time)

Ethan has continued to improve his strength and endurance while eating. He still brady's about once a day on average, but it seems to be less frequently as the week has progressed. He starts most of his feeds orally now, and finishes a couple each day! His little body is starting to chunk up a little, it's really cute to see.

You can see here^^ Ethan stretching. Every three hours or so, he wakes up and stretches, yawns, and then decides to tell us that he's hungry! No, he can't talk yet, but he definitely communicates his desires!

Katie calls this his "milk coma". Just like you and I do after thanksgiving dinner, Ethan gets tired when he's full, and drifts off to sleep with a satisfied smile on his face!

We still don't know when he's coming home, but I know that we're a week closer than we were last Sunday, so that's good news! He's progressing at his own pace and we're just praying that he continues to develop. Your prayers are still very much appreciated, thank you for your continued support.

- Ken

A Whole Feed!!!

Well, Katie and I got home late last night, so I figured I'd post my weekly update this morning. I'm so glad I did! When we arrived at the hospital, his nurse told us that he'd taken his whole bottle at one of his feedings in the night! That was SUCH an encouragement to us, Katie really had begun to feel as though this waiting was interminable.

We forgot to bring the camera cord up to the hospital, so I'll edit this post when we get home this afternoon and put some pictures up. Enjoy your day!

- Ken

3 Weeks Old

I put the original emails on a page here (look at the hard to read page titles at the top of this page) so that you can catch up on the original emails if you missed them. (Click here)

Ethan has continued to have a great week! He did very well those first couple of days after Tuesday, so the doctors moved him up to 2 feeds orally, and Katie is able to nurse him for both of those. Of course, that's been a special thing for her and Ethan, and we're excited that he's come this far.

He's also continued to get bigger. This evening, he weighed 3 lbs, 10.8 oz, which is an improvement of almost half a pound over his initial birth-weight! We are truly blessed for Ethan to be doing so well.
As I was looking for which pictures to put up today, I noticed that we didn't take any of Katie and Ethan, because most of the time she was holding him, she was nursing. I'll try to fix that this week, she is of course much better to look at than myself.

He's been very alert, as you can see in some of these pictures. His eyes aren't yet focusing on anything in particular, over the next 2 weeks that ability should develop more. At some point before Ethan joins us at home, he'll be tested for hearing and sight.
One of my favorite things that has developed this week has been Ethan's personality. I know that I can't really tell who God's created him to be yet, but periodically I think I see flashes of "Ethan" in his responses. I wonder if all parents feel this excited just to discover who their son/daughter is?

Bottle Feeding

Another great report! Ethan has continued to gain weight, he's now just over his birth weight. Also, he started showing signs that he might be ready to try bottle-feeding. Sucking on his fingers, waking up when its time for his feeding, etc. So, yesterday the nurses gave him a bottle for his 3:00 feeding, and he ate 10 cc's from it! We're really excited, it's another milestone for him, and a big one. We've been told that the two goals for him to be able to go home are 1) weigh 4+ lbs, and 2) for him to be taking all his feedings by the bottle/breastfeeding. He's also continuing to gain weight. Katie and I are trying to not get our hopes up, but we're eagerly looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

Happy Mother's Day!

To all you mothers, Happy Mothers Day! This was Katie's first mother's day as a mother, and it was very special for her! We went to church this morning, it was good to be with our church family again.

Ethan has continued to eat, sleep and grow, He's up to about 3.2 lbs today. He's showing signs that he's getting ready to start bottle-feeding. He's waking up and staying awake when it's time for his feeding, starting to "root" around by sucking on his fingers, taking the pacifier, etc. We hope that he'll start bottle-feeding soon, it should happen whenever the doctor's feel like he's capable.

I'm trying to get a couple closeup pictures of Ethan with his eyes open for you guys, but they turned out really grainy. I'll try to get some this week, thank you for all your continued prayers and love!

- Ken