today, eric took one of those teeny, little micropreemie steps that gets him one step closer to being released. he finally beat the wrap! literally. in other words they don’t have to cover his bed in plastic wrap to help keep his body temperature stable. it’s a big deal for a micropreem to be able to maintain his or her own temperature ( in fact it’s one of the release criteria ) and while he can’t do it all on his own, he’s making great progress.

he’s threw more “a’s” ( apneas or stopping breathing ) and “b’s” ( bradycardia or stopping breathing ) today than usual, almost all of them due to mucus and goo collecting in his nasal passages and throat. the nurses joke that eric is “slimy”. it’s not super unusual, but the downside is that they can only get the gunk out by thrusting a tube into his nose and suctioning it out. as i’ve noted before, he doesn’t like it at all and the downside is that you can imagine that the suction tube irritates his passages and he’s getting a bit more blood in the stuff they are suctioning out. it’s one of those things that’s “normal”, but that gets harder and harder to watch day in and day out. and bloody nasal passages seem like nice little areas for infections to grow, so kris and i spend a lot of time just wishing he’d be a little less slimy.

in addition to postcards, eric is receiving surprise gifts! a friend of a friend of a friend who had twins that graduated from the other nicu in town sent us custom bedding! they were hand made by a nicu doctor and they kept her twins bundled; if you look down in the lower left corner you can see that she even stiched “snowdeal” on the bedding so it doesn’t get lost in the laundry.

dang. that’s some serious kindness from a stranger.

the bedding is reversed so i could get the stitched name in the shot with him. you might notice the cloth straps which are used to really give him a bundled feeling. micropreems get distressed at the sudden lack of boundaries and really like feeling things pressing around them which they lost when they were suddenly taken out of the womb.

jeanne, thank you.

a family member bought eric a little angel with his name on it a day or two into his stay at the nicu. for some reason, it kept falling off the stand on his radiant warming bed which would lead to endless “fallen angel” and “the angel fell down on the job” jokes from the staff. somebody came up with the idea of putting it in a plastic bag and hanging it over the edge of a stand on the bed.

for some reason it makes me chuckle whenever i see it.