The doctors did the special blood test on the boys this morning (I forget the name of this particular test) but it showed that the new blood cells the boys are making look good and therefore should contain higher amounts of iron. Nurse Dee said that the likelihood of blood transfusions is now pretty low. Yay!!
Dee also said that they want to try and get them in open cribs in the next couple of days, but that means that Brandon and Colin are going to have to regulate their temperature pretty good for that to happen. So she turned down the heat of their isolettes a little more today (by like another couple of tenths of a Celsius degree). Little adjustments like that should make a difference and hopefully signal the boys' central nervous system to regulate their temperatures more, little by little. We have also decided to forgo the "kangaroo care" times with the boys, where I place them on my chest for some skin-to-skin time. That was good for them when they were younger but as Dee said that is not what's going to help them get home sooner. There are only so many times in a day that they want us to get them out at their care times and those kangaroo sessions would use up valuable time that they could otherwise be spent nursing or bottle feeding. Now that they have a gestational age of 34 weeks we are going to start focusing more on nursing and bottle feeding, because THAT will be a major determining factor on them being discharged. They've got to master nursing and/or bottle feeding, and get rid of the NG tube, before they'll even think about sending them home. So kangarooing is now out and increased nursing and bottle feeds are in. That works for us! We want whatever is best for our boys and what will get them home sooner.
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