drewroman.com

Happy Halloween everyone!

Poor kid, being taken advantage of while asleep, simply for the amusement of his parents, family and friends. Can’t wait to pull these out when he brings his first girlfriend home!

With our focus being all on Michael, I felt that I would share a little shot I took of our other babies, Milo and Nabi. It’s amazing that they actually stayed in place for the shot and even have their eyes open.

They have actually been great with the baby, Nabi, the long haired one, is very protective of the new member of the pack and barks at anyone outside of the family that makes a sudden move towards the baby. If he’s getting fussy she starts getting antsy and cries too. Milo, the black and tan one, has been great also, but still a little confused as to why this baby doesn’t drop as much food as other babies usually do. Soon enough Milo… soon enough.

Well… it’s been over a week now that Michael’s been home and he is doing great! We’ve been to see his pediatrician as well as the doctor that performed his surgery. Everyone thinks that he is doing well. He should be getting his G-tube (stomach tube) out in a few weeks.

We’ve been transitioning him over to mostly bottle feeds and he is handling it very well and has quite an appetite.

Everyone has been asking for more pictures and unfortunately we only have a few decent ones for now.

Update 10/31/2008 11:00pm: Lots of things happening with the boy… We are now feeding him 100% by mouth and are up to 100ml a feed, every 3 hours or so. The home care nurse visited on Wednesday and he weighed 9lbs 2oz. It’s amazing how fast he’s growing.

He was discharged from home care on Wednesday and is going to have his G-tube taken out Tuesday next week, a bit earlier than expected, but considering how well he’s doing with feeding, it would be silly to keep it in much longer. I will be extremely happy to have that thing out, I’m always worried that I’ll yank on it by mistake and it will come out.

UPDATE 11/04/2008 8pm: Michael had his second visit with his pediatrician today and had his G-tube taken out! He’s now up to about 110-120ml per feeding, every three hours or so. He’s gaining weight like crazy and is now up to 9lbs 15oz and is around 23 inches long.

More updates as they come.

I got a real kick out of the email I got from WaMu this morning…

Michael Phillip Roman was born at 12:09pm Eastern at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, MD.

He was born about 4 1/2 weeks early, but is of pretty good size and healthy. We’ll have more detailed stats after the NICU checks him out well.

Michael, Mom and I are doing well so far.

UPDATE 9/18 7:15pm: just got back from seeing Michael at the NICU. He is 6lbs 10oz and 20.5in long. Not to bad for 4.5 weeks early. Mom and baby still doing okay, Dad is a little frazzled but hanging in there.

UPDATE 9/21 10:00am: Michael was improving quite a bit, but blood was showing up in his stomach. He was transferred from the NICU at Howard County General in Columbia, MD to the NICU at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore late last night. He had surgery this morning to close up a perforation in his stomach, possibly an ulcer. He is stable and doing well, but will probably be there for a few weeks. Mom is still in the hospital and improving, but probably won’t be home for a few days still. I am running on about 8-10 hours of sleep for the past week, but still hanging in there.

I had to bring one of our dogs, Milo, to a specialty vet on the 18th as well. He was very anemic and had to have two blood transfusions while they treated him. He’s improving as well, hopefully he’ll be home in a few days.

UPDATE 9/22 9:15pm: Mom had to have surgery yesterday afternoon as well as there were a few things that just weren’t working the way that they should be. She came through it fine and is recovering nicely. The only issues I have are that I can’t stay with her like I could in the Maternal Child Unit and that I don’t get the impression that the nurses are giving her as much care as she received in the MCU (the MCU/NICU nurses and techs were all wonderful). She’ll be in the hospital for probably another 5-7 days. I visited Michael last night and this morning and he is recovering from his surgery nicely also. I understand why he needs to be at the NICU at Hopkins, but it is a fairly monumental pain to go out there, Howard County General  is right around the corner from our house, which would have allowed us to easily go see him as many times a day as we would have liked. At least we know that he’s being cared for well, my only wish is that his mother could see him. I also went to go see our dog Milo yesterday, he wasn’t his usual happy self, but has stabilized and is improving, The vet said that he should be able to go home by tomorrow evening, I will probably let them keep him until Wednesday just in case. My in-laws arrived last night also, which has been great for Mom as my mother-in-law was able to stay with her tonight.

UPDATE 9/24 12:45pm: Our dog, Milo, came home today, he’s looking much better and happy to be home. Mom is still sore from surgery, but is feeling a lot better. Michael has had the breathing tube that was put in for surgery taken out and is doing well. We’ll be going out to see him and should have a picture or two up sometime this afternoon.

UPDATE 9/24 9:00pm: Mom is doing much better today, hopefully she’ll be home in a few days. Her nurse situation seems to have changed for the better, may have been someone having a bad night, everyone else over there has been great.

Michael is breathing on his own without any assistance or extra oxygen and is doing really well, he’s even off of his pain medication.

Poor kid’s been through so much, thank goodness he won’t remember any of it.

UPDATE 9/26: A lot of progress has been made in the past two days.

Mom has hit a major milestone in her recovery and can finally start taking liquids by mouth.

Michael is doing great, he’s even getting his first bit of formula today!

I visited him for about two hours and was able to hold him for the first time… what a wonderful feeling!

He just sat there looking up at me with a content face, it was certainly one of the best feelings that I’ve felt in my life.

Mom should be home in a few days and hopefully Michael won’t be too far behind.

Milo is doing great, he seems to be back to pretty much the way that he should be.

UPDATE 9/27 6:00pm: Mom is still improving, but we still don’t have any idea of when she’ll be home. Michael is doing very well, they have him up to 2.5cc of formula and hour now and his pipes seem to be working as they should.

UPDATE 9/28 6:30pm: Michael is now up to 3cc of formula an hour and tomorrow they’ll start feeding him in a normal feeding pattern verses the continuous feeding he’s getting now. The nurses tell us that he’s a very easy baby to deal with, not too fussy, hopefully he’ll still be that way when he gets home. Mom is still getting better but hasn’t been feeling too great today, she’s able to eat soup and juice, but tells me that the soup tastes like crap. We’re still hoping to get her home this week, it’s been twelve days in the hospital so far.

UPDATE 9/29 8:45pm: Well, Mom is finally home! She’s not feeling her best, but certainly better than before and hopefully is more comfortable now at home. Michael is doing very well, we didn’t get to see him today as Mom’s discharge took up quite a bit of time. His nurse says that he’ll be taking in 6cc of full-strength formula per hour at midnight and has a good chance of moving from the warmer to a regular crib soon. Two home, one more to go!

UPDATE 10/3 6:30pm: Mom is doing much better and finally got to visit and hold Michael for the first time! It was a great feeling watching her hold him, it kind of made things feel complete. Michael is doing well, he’s now out of the warmer and in a regular crib. Progress with feeding has been a little slower than the nurses would like, but he’s still making decent progress. Still don’t have a firm idea of when he’ll be able to come home.

UPDATE 10/10/2008 8:30pm: We just got a call from Johns Hopkins and were informed that Michael is being transferred out of the NICU into a step-down unit. He’ll be in his own room, so we’ll be able to stay with him. I have a feeling that he’ll be home really soon as his feeding is improving a lot and he’s doing really well overall.

I got to change the first of many diapers the day before yesterday, wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, even with all of those lines and wires attached to him.

Mom is doing much better also, she had her staples out the other day and is getting around pretty well.

UPDATE 10/16/2008 6:00pm: Michael was discharged from the hospital and is now home. He is still being fed mostly by tube, but doing great. Considering that today is our 4 year wedding anniversary, I don’t think we could have received a better gift. Now the fun begins…

Thank you to everyone that’s visited, called or contacted us in some way, I am so grateful that we have such a wonderful group of family and friends. This would have been much harder to deal with without all of you. Also a big thanks to all of the Johns Hopkins staff (Baltimore and Howard County) that were there to take care of us throughout all of this

More updates as they come.

FInally… drewroman.com is alive.

I’m in the throes of starting up my new IT consulting business, Decisive IT, Inc., so there will probably not be too much content out here to start, but check back every once in a while… you might be surprised.