Life at Home

Well, we brought Xander home on Wednesday last week. He’s been doing good. When I took him to the doctor on Thursday, he weighed 5lbs 1oz. We go in to check his weight again next Thursday.

Coming Home!

Hooray, hooray! The doctor is going to discharge Xander from the hospital tomorrow morning. They took out his feeding tube yesterday and he has been eating all his feedings on his own. We are planning on coming home tomorrow. I am so glad. I can’t wait to all be together as a family again.

Signs of Improvement

Xander is slowly making progress. He has been moved from the warmer to a crib, so he is holding his temperature now. He gets every other feeding by bottle (instead of every third), and he has been eating most of his bottle feedings all on his own. Yipee! He has gained weight, too, and he’s up to 4lbs 11ozs. He is just as cute as can be, but I don’t have any more recent photos. We’ll get some tomorrow. The doctors have been doing lots of tests to rule out any potential problems, so I am happy to report that his brain and heart are both perfect. He’s just a pokey feeder, but he’s getting better at that.

Tracy spent the weekend at home with the boys and Camary and they all had a great time. He’s back in Vegas tonight and the boys go back to our awesome neighbors, the Kimbers. Three cheers for the Kimbers for taking such good care of the boys! I miss them, but I hope we’ll all be together again soon.

Earlier than thought

Xander turned the corner over the last day or two and started gaining weight. He was back up to 4lbs 5.5oz on Monday night. We talked to the pediatrician last night and he thinks he was earlier than we thought, probably 5-6 weeks instead of four, which means he could be in the hospital another 7-10 days. Of course, the time it takes is completely dependent on how fast he gains weight and starts to eat better on his own.

Meanwhile, the boys are staying with some friends back home. I took them home on Sunday and came back to Vegas Monday. The ward here has been feeding us dinner and there have been lots of volunteers to run the boys to their activities in Elk Ridge. Just another perk of being LDS!

I’ve posted more pictures in our Gallery.

Vegas vacation?

Last Wednesday we left home at about 7:30pm to head for Las Vegas to visit Angie’s family for a few days. The original plan was to come and visit for Thanksgiving, but we decided that would be too close to Angie’s due date. So, we arrived here at about 12:30am and got everyone to bed. The next thing I knew, Angie was waking me up saying her water had broken. A few hours later, Xander Gabriel Lofthouse was born via c-section, a full four weeks early.

So, our little vacation has turned into something completely unexpected. Xander will probably have to stay in the hospital for a week, possibly two. He is doing well, but because he is so small (4lbs 9oz at birth), it’s going to be a struggle for him to gain weight and get stronger without close supervision. He now has a feeding tube because he doesn’t have the energy to eat what he needs, and he’s frequently under a warming lamp to maintain his body temp, but those are normal issues with a preemie. His lungs are strong and everything else functions properly, so it’s just a matter of making sure he has enough calories to keep warm and grow.

Angie is doing well, too, and will probably be discharged tomorrow. The whole thing has been rough on her, but she’s hanging in there.

The most pressing question now is: What do we do with the boys that are supposed to be in school next week? I’m going to take them to the BYU-UNLV game and deal with that problem later…

Hello World!

Sigh. Well, we’re back. Sort of. A hard drive started going south a couple of weeks ago, and it has taken awhile to get the server back up again. Things still aren’t where I want them to be, but I’ll get there eventually…