A Breath of Fresh Air

Benjamin will be 5 months on Thursday (7 weeks adjusted) and continues to grow and amaze us. If you check out his big boy stats on the sidebar you will find that he is over 8 and 1/2 pounds! He has outgrown his preemie clothes and is on to newborn and 0-3 month articles. A big piece of news is that Benjamin is getting closer to being off oxygen. For the past 10 days or so, we have been conducting trials where we remove his oxygen and keep him on the monitor. The result has been nearly no oxygen during the day (we still keep it on him at night until we are more confident) with only a "whiff" here and there and some help during carrides. Today we visited the Pulmonologist, who manages his oxygen, and he confirmed that we can continue the trials and move forward as Benjamin allows. His mommy CANNOT WAIT to be free of oxygen and a monitor. I daydream about going places with only a diaper bag, not tripping over tubes and cords in my living room, and not hearing alarms go off.

We visited the audiologist last week. I was very excited to see that he passed the ear that had failed in the NICU, but then he failed the ear that had previously passed. He went on to start the beginning of a 3-hour long test to determine if there was any potential loss until he decided he had enough of having his ears poked and solved the problem by throwing up all over the audiologists equiptment. She was very gracious and despite the mess she still ooh'd and ahh'd over him, and after booking 2 more appointments (*sigh*) she let us go home.

Are we adjusting to our new life at home? Somedays. I never in my wildest dreams believed that one so little could be so very time consuming. God was so smart to make babies cute. Otherwise Eve would have only had one and none of us would be here. I have also figured out why the oldest son had a special blessing in the Bible and inherited the family goods. That was his reward for the survival of being his parents first child. Since Brian and I were both the youngest of our siblings growing up, we never fully appreciated the fact that our parents got to work out most of their parenting on our older siblings. Poor Benjamin. Good thing he is a survivor!