September 15th, 2006

It's been a while! We've been busy feeding twins at all hours of the day and night!
Karter and Kolton have completed their next to last eye exam to check for ROP (Retinopothy of Prematurity). The retinas are one of the last things to develop in a baby so when babies come too early, the eyes sometimes didn't have a chance to finish, as a result, the blood vessels of the retina can grow out of control and cause blindness. The more premature the baby, the more likely the chances for ROP and the degree of blindness. The boys show no signs of ROP at this point. The eye doctors says that they're chances of developing ROP at this point are very very low. They have one more exam in two weeks and then they will go in every six months for checkups. The ROP exam is very unpleasant for the baby and in our case it caused Kolton and Karter to experience a bit of a set back. Kolton began have episodes of bradychardia before we were even out of the doctors office! No one informed us that causing the babies stress could cause this to happen. Fortunately they've calmed back down now and we have no appointments scheduled for a week or two. On a better note, We've been able to turn down Karter's oxygen from 1/8 liter/minute to 1/16 liter. This means his lungs are growing out of his BPD (Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia). BPD is caused by what the doctors have to do to premature babies that can't breath on their own. The babies have to be intubated and the pressure and oxygen concentration cause scarring on the lung tissue. Fortunately, most preemies grow out of it as their lungs increase in size, the scar tissue decreases relative to the overall lung volume. We took Karter off of his oxygen tonight for about 25 minutes just to see what would happen. He stayed in the 90% saturation range the whole time! We're going try this again on and off and let the doctor know the results. It tells us that his BPD is not very serious and soon he will no longer need oxygen. As a result of our oxygen test, we were able to get some pictures of Karter without his cannula on. If he looks big, it's because he is! He's over 7 pounds now. His brother is between 6 and 7 and moving on up.