Sleepy Weekend, No Weight Gain

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a great weekend.

The weather has been erratic in Tokyo this weekend. In fact, there was a spring typhoon that made for some wet moments.

Isaac has been sleeping a lot these days. I think the nurses are still giving him sedatives and I suppose that is best if it means it will help him grow and perhaps improve his PDA. We are still blessed with brief moments of lucidity - flashes of a smile here or a peek there - perhaps because we get pretty noisy and excited every time we see him. Oddly enough I still think that Isaac may have lucked out by being in an incubator for a while as I don't think I'd give him a moments rest if he were home already. I think Sonia is starting to worry about that eventuality!

I don't know whether it is because they had a pause in feeding or perhaps his body is now working on skeletal expansion and assimiliation of the recent weight gain rather than adding weight as he has been losing weight over the past couple of days now. His extremeties definitely seem to be growing - it is amazing to us how much bigger his hands are now (they're still tiny) even though he hasn't grown much in terms of total body length.

Sonia and I are asking the hospital to try something new (for them anyway). Given how little time we get with Isaac, that we aren't allowed to pinky feed him and the likelihood that he will be tube fed for some time, we've become increasingly concerned that he will not learn to associate feeding with all of the wonderful sensations involved in eating. We wanted to be a bit more aggressive (what's new?) in our approach but we compromised with the hospital to at least offer him a little of Sonia's milk on a Q-tip cotton swab each time he is fed so he can at least associate the taste of his mother's milk to feeding. We hope to hear from the doctor today that they are ok with this.

We also hit a bit of a rough patch this weekend on the missing Rachel front. I think a lot of it was (unintentionally) my fault actually. I have been having a devil of a time with tennis elbow (even though I almost never play these days) for some time now and Sonia was able to secure an appointment for me on Saturday morning and I convinced her to come along. I forgot that Saturdays are walk in days at the expat clinic we frequent which generally means masses of children and expectant mothers. I should have anticipated this and should not have brought Sonia but I realized it too late. I think seeing so many pregnant mothers waiting to see our very same Dr. Sakamoto struck a nerve as it was too hard not to imagine how Sonia should have been one of those mothers waiting to see the good doctor in her third trimester with Rachel and Isaac still swimming around in her tummy.

In the end, I think it was good that this happened actually as we certainly can't run away from such things (it would sort of be sinful wouldn't it?) and I believe it will help us with our grieving process.

Our experiences this weekend have helped convince me however that we do need to find another NICU for Isaac so that we can spend more time with him, at least on weekends. I think it is tough enough for Sonia to lactate for one when there should be two but the physical absence of Isaac during those times makes it hard for her to avoid a two to zero mind set. Assuming the PDA surgery goes well, Isaac should be awake more often as well.

Church was interesting this weekend. Virtually the entire pastoral team is away in Los Angeles at the Purpose Driven Conference. We also attended the last service at 3:30 and while we are not certain whether it was because of the absence of our music ministry pastors (kidding) or simply because the time slot is more attractive to a younger audience (I'm sure it is the latter), the service was full of energy from the band and singers to the volume of praise coming from the congregation. Then again, maybe it is always this way but I'm just to hazy and groggy in the mornings to notice! The Pastors were all sorely missed. Service was great but just not the same.

Sorry for the meandering post. Sonia has been doing all of the posts of late (mostly because I think she does a much better job of it - as evidenced by this attempt) and I wanted to make a token contribution. Please take care and thanks as always for your prayers.

Blessings,

Jong