O2 Be Free

So big good news today. Clara no longer needs to be on oxygen!!! Last week we had a sleep study done and we received the results today. Clara averaged 93% on her oxygen saturation and only dipped to 88% or below 0.7% of the time. These numbers matched my expectations since I checked in on Clara frequently during the sleep study. I was a bit surprised that averaging only 93% was sufficient to take Clara off oxygen since it is on the low side of the targeted 92% to 97% range. Kristina was the one who talked to the Doc and he expressed that her overall numbers were actually quite good. So hooray!

Even though Clara had progressed to just needing oxygen at night and during naps this is still just a huge step for me. It’s ingrained in me that these girls are fragile, but I can’t express how good it feels to remove this reminder of how much we have endured. Admittedly, when Clara first came home on oxygen it was almost a badge of courage that the oxygen followed us around. Kristina and I had been through a lot and I would have traded Clara coming home oxygen free for the world. But that would have seemed a bit unfair. If Clara had come home oxygen free it would have felt odd that a passer by, or a visitor to our home, could look at our twins and have no notion that it hasn’t been easy for us. However, time has worn on and I think of Kristina’s hospitalization and the NICU struggles as distant memories and so it seems only natural now that Clara is off oxygen. At this point it would seem unfair to have that badge of courage, because the girls are happy and growing and progressing. With Clara’s cannula stickers removed from her head we now look and can start to feel like a normal family. Oh boy does that feel good.

Wiilly Niit

Old habits die hard…like not updating my blog very frequently.

I probably should write about the uneventful well baby doctor’s visit that the twins had today (huge sigh of relief), but my wife, the blog subject thief, already has it covered. Instead, I will talk about much more worldly matters.

It’s not quite news anymore but one of my Father’s Day gifts from Kristina came as quite a surprise. After years of Kristina taking a hard line stance against game consoles, she surprised me with a Nintendo Wii. I know my wife trusts me, but she has made rightful claims that her stance was due to her “not wanting to lose her husband.” I guess I should maybe take pause at that notion and wonder if she actually does want to lose her husband, but instead I blindly assumed that she thought I could actually be responsible and not play all day and all night. To prove my responsibility I even waited a couple days until I could clear out an evening to setup the Wii. I did this despite my instinct to set it up right away and let the family fend for themselves for a few days. However, on the evening I did get it installed I “tested” the unit until the, uh, wii hours of the night.

While I’ve certainly played computer games in years past (not sure why I don’t very often these days) the one and only game console I’ve ever owned is an Atari 2600. I sunk plenty of hours into that game console (I used to have the Activision patches to prove it). With that point of reference the Wii is an amazing creation to me. It is a far cry from the days of blowing in the cartridge to get a game to work. When I first opened the box I couldn’t believe how small the console is. Then as I looked at the connections I foolishly thought “how can you fit multiple joysticks into this (I hadn’t yet learned the proper term: Wii Remote - and didn’t think to use the proper generic term: game controller)?” Silly me, there are no wires for the controllers, because they are wireless. Duh. Speaking of wirelessness, it’s also very cool that the Wii comes with the ability to connect wirelessly to the internet. This has allowed me to download Super Mario Bros. for Kristina, which has the nice side effect of enabling my sinister plan for her to become attached to the Wii too.

Anyway, I’m quite happy with the Wii versus the other game consoles. Not only are most game titles a little more kid friendly (I’ll need to start Alex as soon as possible of course), but I really do like the idea of having to get up and move around to play a game. Plus, quite frankly the game controllers found on the Play Station and XBox just confuse and disorient and old man like me. The Wii controllers are quite natural, which is very welcome.

Anyway, I would write more, but clearly I have some important things to do.

183 Days Later

The girls turned 6 months today. In some ways it seems like a long time ago since my mind works hard to forget the stressful days while Kristina was in the hospital and then the girls were in the NICU. Thankfully, the NICU days seem long gone. In other ways time has flown by. Going to work and helping parent 3 kiddos when I'm home does not create much boredom. In that sense, time has zipped by and so it seems the twins cannot possibly have already traveled half way around the sun.

In many respects the girls have come quite far. Never mind the feat of just getting out of the NICU without crazy major complications. Clara has reduced her oxygen needs faster than anticipated. With the help of the physical therapist's weekly visits and Kristina's uber-mom diligence with therapy, the therapist is already seeing good progress as the girls attempt to catch up to their peers. It is also nice to have a therapist around to look for some of the subtle signs of neurological damage (she hasn't noted any) and to observe that the girls are hitting milestones roughly together (they have). At this point the girls are relatively healthy, are gaining weight well, and are mostly happy babies. They are even starting to crack a little bit of a laugh now.

Still, there have been enough scares to stay a bit cynical. Perhaps my memory is poor, but it seems like when Alex hit a milestone, he grasped it fairly quickly. For the girls, milestones seem harder to judge as they develop gradually. And Clara has hit a bit of a wall with her oxygen. We were hoping she would be off oxygen by now, but some experiments removing oxygen from Clara as she tries to sleep have failed (though she is so very close). A little coughing fit doesn't strike fear anymore, but receives a lingering raised eyebrow of worry. I'm grateful for the progress already made and ecstatic to see the girls' little faces light up when they see me in the morning an again when I come home from work (they are happy babies). However, there is still a constant undercurrent of concern.

I'm curious to see what the next 183 days will bring.