Chewing Red Man Yet "Objectively" Cute?

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are well.

We returned to Toho Hospital today still pumped up from yesterday's wonderful news about Isaac's weight gain.

The NICU was really busy - it is Golden Week holiday season here so there were fewer nurses staffed today yet the NICU was full with the addition of two new babies.

We were also very anxious because today was the day when our doctor was supposed to give us the results of a number of exams and tests. Unfortunately, he was tied up for the first half hour with the new babies.

But that was ok because we got to spend time with Isaac. Isaac was ok today. He still looked pretty uncomfortable but he was sleeping pretty well. While we were touching him, we found out that he would be having his next feeding just after our visit so Sonia took advantage of the opportunity to pump some fresh breastmilk for him. This would be the first time Isaac would have fresh breastmilk!

He is still so fun to watch! It looks like he is learning more about himself each day. He still doesn't seem to have the eyes wide open and closed thing down yet and it is hilarious at times to see him try and open his eyes by raising his eyebrows and creasing his forehead as much as humanly possible only to realize a moment later that he could just open his eyelids. He looks so surprised when that works!

I snuck a pinky feeding in again as well. This time was a little tougher as I didn't have Sonia to physically block the line of sight between the nurses doing their rounds and my infringing activity. He really seemed to enjoy himself today. His jaw and tongue strength and sucking ability seems to improve each time I do this so I'm inclined to continue until I get busted again! (did Sonia post about my getting caught and lectured to a few days ago? For a couple of days thereafter, they sort of taped across his mouth so that I couldn't do it again!!!).

In any event, we immediately noticed that Isaac looked a little different today. While his cheeks have become pretty pronounced these past few days, today it looked like our little guy had a HUGE wad of Red Man in his cheek!!! For those of you who aren't familiar with this nasty habit, Red Man is a brand of chewing tobacco very popular with baseball players and good ol' boys (I used to be the former and always love to pretend to be the latter). We actually thought that they must have inserted some gauze around the breathing tube to help secure it or something. In fact, we called a nurse to have her explain why his cheek was so darn big and after a few minutes of verbal wrestling, she confirmed that there was no gauze and that it was just Isaac getting chubbier! Looking at some of Sonia's baby pictures, I think I understand where he gets this from.

In any event, his breathing still seemed pretty labored and it looked like they had increased is oxygen level again so we tried not to disturb him too much.

After a while, Dr. Ishii came by and it was quite the comedic episode. While all we could think about were his test results, he seemed to want to talk and talk and talk about Isaac's general condition today relative to yesterday, etc.... We finally aksed about the test results and he started with the good news - blood pressure, feeding, pooping, peeing, etc... all ok, even after taking him off of his blood pressure medicine. He said that they even checked his eyes late last week and that they were ok but warned that ROP doesn't really occur until week 30 - 34. He then started talking about his worsening CLD which is causing a higher and higher level of oxygen to be delivered through Isaac's feeding tube. Not good of course but he reminded us that this is really almost unavoidable for preemies born this early. As we understand higher oxygen levels help cause brain and eye problems later on, we're really praying hard that Isaac can continue to grow at a fast (hopefully faster) clip so that he can grow out of his CLD enough to avoid having his oxygen levels increase much further.

After all of this, Dr. Ishii seemed to conspicuously leave out his brain test results!!! Sonia and I were squirming and staring at each other positive that he was going to tell us that they had started to detect some problems and that he was leaving it for last. We finally couldn't bear it any longer and Sonia just blurted out "and his brain tests!!!???" After the initial surprise, Dr. Ishii seemed to realize that we were pretty wound up and quickly delivered the good news - no signs of complications yet! Amen! I know from the many posts from moms who have had micro-preemies that some brain bleed or cysts aren't the end of the world but I think we're still nervous about it.

In any event, Sonia and I fully understand that this is something that God will figure out and we are just going to have to knock on his door again and again and again until he answers our prayers.

Sonia said the cutest thing on the way back home. She actually said, "honey, OBJECTIVELY, don't you think that Isaac is REALLY cute???" I had to think about the question for a second because I wasn't sure if she was intentionally being funny or perhaps testing me with a trick question. But the look in her eyes made it clear that she was 100% serious! She has such a sweet and agendaless innocence and sincerity about her sometimes. So of course I replied that there were no two people more capable of being OBJECTIVE about Isaac's cuteness and that the jury was unanimous. I also dared her to post her question on the blog and explained to her what online flaming was all about! We concluded that being subjective about the matter would allow us greater latitude to dote on Isaac anyway so... Sometimes I wonder who is cuter, Sonia or Isaac (not really! heh heh).

Blessings,

Jong