Two Million Dollar Baby!

As you might guess from the title of this post, Madeline's hospital bill showed up in the mail today. Well, it wasn't technically a bill since it stated in prominent print "THIS IS NOT A BILL" right at the top -- thank God! But it was a full accounting of Madeline's hospital stay. What's the damage? How about over $1.8 million dollars -- really. Of course, that's probably only about 50 Euros due to the incredible shrinking dollar. The good news is that I have good insurance for the babies, and they are unlikely to get repossessed. I suspect that Milo's bill will come nearer to $2 million (or more) due to his higher level of treatment, and remember that he still has to get surgery on his hernia. More than likely, Tricare will pay about 10 to 20% of the total based on the "negotiated" terms between the insurance company and Alta Bates.

The big news this week is that Milo had his nasal gavage ("NG") tube removed and he looks much better without it. Mom was on hand for several hours today, and she and Nurse Janet made sure that Milo got his fill of plenty of milk.

Milo gets ready for a hose-free feeding from Dad today.

Milo recovers from a hose-free feeding with Dad.

Mom with Milo the day before yesterday.

In even bigger news, it looks like Milo may get to come this week. We're shooting for this Friday, which would be great since Aunt Heather is coming for a visit this Saturday. No doubt Heather will be very disappointed if she doesn't get to change both babies repeatedly. Keep your fingers crossed and lets hope it all goes as planned.

Earlier this week Madeline went outside for her first walk. It was a pretty short jaunt with Mom and Dad. Maddy was in a baby carrier attached to Dad. A couple days later, I took her out for her first solo jaunt in her stroller.

Maddy departs for her first stroller walk with Dad.

Maddy has settled in pretty well and seems to like the place. No doubt she misses the 24/7 doting that she received from her nurses. But she seems pretty happy all in all.

Maddy catches a few winks in her swing.

Hard day's night(s)...

So what's it like having Maddy at home? It's pretty much like every cliche you've heard about having a new baby. Those of you who have kids will recall that during the pregnancy, few people could talk about the event without including some line about "getting your sleep now." Well, of course it's basically all true, and when you have a preemie it's probably even a little more so. I'm sure having twin preemies at home will verge on science fiction, but we're not quite there yet.

The first night we discovered that babies make a lot of noises when they sleep - lots of chirps, squawks, farts, and the occasional burp. And of course they cry too. There's so much background noise at the hospital that we never really noticed how noisy Maddy is when she sleeps. For the first night I was out of the bed inspecting her every time she made a peep. The only thing worse than the noise was the rare silence. During those moments, I would jump out of bed and put my ear near her nose to make sure she was still breathing. Of course she was, but that's not something easy to take for granted when you've been watching monitors for the last 16 weeks.

Each night since the first has gotten a little better for the most part. Antina was kind enough to stand a watch for us during the week to allow us to get a decent night's sleep. God bless her. The last couple nights were pretty rough though. Maddy was gassy (which she gets from Elaine of course), and it's not nearly as funny as you'd think. Baby farts are cute and mostly lack smell, but the pain they produce drives the little ones round the bend. We've been working with a bunch of different solutions and we think we've got a few promising leads. Hopefully it's not colic. I mean, come on! I think we deserve a free pass on colic.

On the plus side, Maddy seems to be putting on the weight quickly at home. We weighed her a couple days ago and she came in at 7 lbs 10 ozs.

As for Milo, he's alright these days. We tried switching to a different bottle for him and it seems to be working out well so far. He did much better with his feeds today. On the negative side, the little guy has developed a terrible diaper rash. The nurses are on it -- so hopefully it will resolve soon. Milo weighed in at a robust 7 lbs 9 ozs. We're hoping to have him home within 2 weeks or so.

Maddy Comes Home! (Now what do we do?)

After our last post, you probably didn't expect to be reading this. But hey, the roller coaster goes up, the roller coaster goes down. So how'd it happen? Yesterday Elaine got a call in the morning from the babies' regular doctor, Dr. Kao. The night before, Dr. Kao had left for the day when Maddy had the brady, and the doctor covering the evening shift wanted to play it safe and keep Maddy there. Dr. Kao learned about the decision the following morning and decided that Maddy was OK to go home. Still, we hesitated to post anything until we actually had her home.

As I write this, it's 9:30 in morning and Maddy is (mostly) asleep in her pack-n-play just a few feet from our sofa. Below is the complete photo documentary.

Maddy and Milo hanging out together one last time while Maddy is a patient. The little girl will be back each day to visit Milo along with Mom & Dad.

Nurse Brandi ceremonially removes Maddy's ID tag. It would have been strange to realize now that she was the wrong baby. She's ours!

A small contingent of the great medical team who cared for Maddy. That's Cheryl up front holding Maddy for the last time as a NICU patient. No doubt we'll still harass them all for advice in the coming months.

Maddy's first breath of fresh, clean East Bay air.

Nurse Brandy hands off to Elaine and now she's ours.

Elaine carefully inspects the baby to make sure there are no warranty issues. "Hey, wait a minute! There's a hemangioma on this baby's head! Where's customer service?"

I like this picture because it captures -- completely by accident -- a bunch of pertinent things. The baby is front and center with Mom arranging her; the hospital (and Elaine's hospital room) are in the reflection, and there I am in the center taking a picture and trying to be useful.

Elaine got to take the hand-off, so I took the honors and carried Maddy inside the house.

Lucy senses that things are about to change.

Maddy gets her first bath at home. Then it was off to bed. Maddy's first night home started off pretty sedate, but she was restless throughout the night. We're thinking the new surroundings, routines, and some heavy gas pains kept her fussy. We did manage a couple hours of sleep.

The morning after our first night of full-on parenthood. Elaine looks a bit shell-shocked, but she's feeling better now. Luckily Aunt Antina was on-hand to help us out.

Of course, the little man has to hang out in good ole' room 15 for a little while longer, but we'll all be heading off to visit him later this morning. He did very well with his feedings last night and this morning. If he keeps it up, he should be home before too long. No baby left behind!

Almost...

Around noon I was at a conference in San Francisco when I got word from Elaine that Maddy would be discharged today. Awesome! Finally! I headed over the hospital and we spent a while going through all the discharge details. Instead of rushing home, we decided to hang around for a while to visit with Milo before bringing Maddy home. A bit after 7:00 pm I finished carring all of Maddy's things out to the car, brought in her car seat, and was about to start getting her all set for the journey home. Then an alarm went off.

The alarm only lasted for a couple seconds, but it was a familiar sound -- one we've heard many time before, though not too often of late. We looked up quickly at Maddy's monitor just in time to see the number 86 in the top right hand corner. It was only there for a moment, and within a second or two the number jumped to 124, then 130 something, then back up to the 150s. As you all know by now, a brady occurs anytime a baby's heart rate drops below 100 for more than 10-15 seconds. And as you also know, whenever a NICU baby has a brady she must be kept in the hospital for 5 days for further observation. In Maddy's case, I guess it's tough to tell whether she remained below 100 for more than 10-15 seconds, though it was probably close. But regardless, the result is 5 more days of hanging out in the NICU for Maddy.

I guess 5 days shouldn't matter that much after 111 have gone by, but this was pretty tough to take. It hasn't always been easy going through this ordeal, but we've tried to keep upbeat. Tonight was a rough though. We know the docs and the folks at Alta Bates are looking out for Maddy, and this is just the way it has to be. It still sucks.