Spencer Austin Morris

Much to our surprise, our second son was born about 5 weeks before his due date on New Years Eve. I went in to my 35 week OB appt concerned that my blood pressure was up (as it had been with Wright). It was indeed way up and the dr sent me down to triage for some tests. As soon as I was down there and laying on my side, my bp went way down and I was hopeful that I would go home and be put on bed rest for a few weeks. But then my blood work came back and yet again my liver numbers were really high (higher even than when they induced me with Wright), so my dr broke the news that I would be induced the next day or maybe even have a cesarean that night. I ended up being induced Thursday morning and Spencer was born at 5pm on the dot that evening.

Sadly, because Spencer was so early, he had to go the NICU. He is still there and improving every day. To dumb it down the main issue is his breathing. His lungs are not developed so they had to intibate him and put medicine direclty into his lungs to help them mature. In the meantime, he is on a machine that gives him extra oxygen at a higher flow than mature lungs need. They are trying to slowly ween him off of that every day. To feed him, they have a tube in his mouth that goes directly into his stomach. I pump and bring the milk up there and they give him about 1 TB every three hours. It is crazy how little he eats! The occupational therapist is coming to see him tomorrow to try a bottle and determine a feeding plan moving forward. Once he is off the oxygen and breathing on his own, we will work on getting him to take all 8 feedings by bottle daily. At that point, he can come home. The drs expect it will be a few more weeks. In the meantime, his Bilirubin levels are also up so they have put him under the lights to treat that. The hardest part of all is that we cannot hold him and also seeing this poor little 5lb 15 oz baby with a tube or needle coming out of every possible place on his body.

About 30 seconds after his birth.

He is so swollen in this picture taken at about 5:03pm.

Here he is not too long after the tube was taken out of his lungs. He is starting to look yellow.

Now he is really looking yellow/orange. This was taken yesterday.

This is the one time they let me hold him since he has been in NICU. Not too long after this, we had to lay him back down cause he starting gurgling (struggling to manage his breath).

Here I am feeding him through his tube.

And today under the lights...with more wires than ever!