Parenthood: One crisis after another

I should start this off by saying this is Tyf reporting in. There's been so much to update on and we've both been a bit overwhelmed. Maybe you'll understand a bit more after reading this post.

As Billy reported earlier, little (or not-so-little, depending on who's birthing him) Kiernan made his way into the world a little after midnight on the 20th. For that next day we cuddled him and loved him and snuggled with him in our room. We had a couple visits from the lactation consultants for tips on breastfeeding and he did well enough a couple of times to give me a glimmer of hope that we would be able to breastfeed. Both Billy and I did notice that Kiernan did seem to get frustrated with trying to latch on (is that the famous Boettcher temper or the famous Burke temper?), but we were assured it was normal. Around 9:00 that evening we decided to send him to the nursery for a couple hours for a cup feeding of formula (his last good latch on had been around 2:00 that afternoon) and for Momma and Daddy to get a couple hours of sleep before our midnight attempt at breastfeeding.

Around 11:00 pm a new doctor came into our room and woke us up to tell us that they had just admitted Kiernan into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Um, those are pretty scary words to throw around to people who haven't even been parents for 24 hours. I honestly thought the guy was in the wrong room. Unfortunately, he was not. They admitted Kiernan into NICU because he was having rapid breathing, which thankfully was noticed by a very observant nurse (and not by his parents who had been in the room cuddling with him all day!). This also contributed to his inability to latch on during breastfeeding. Apparently, given the choice of breathing or latching, our brilliant son chose the former.

It took me about a day to really wrap my head around the fact that our sweet baby was in NICU. He's doing amazingly and every time we're down to visit him (which is pretty much constantly, for those of you who can't reach us on our cell phones) he's been so aware and wonderful. He just opens his eyes and stares are you. Sigh. We still need lots of prayers for him and for the doctors and nurses taking care of him. They say that we should know more around this time tomorrow as far as test results go. Most tests that have come back for him have been normal, with a few exceptions. He's diagnosed with Type 2 Respiratory Distress Syndrome, also called TTN (Transient Tachypnea of Newborns) or wet lungs. Because it was such a rapid delivery (who ever thought that could be a bad thing?) he didn't have time to have all the fluid compressed out of his lungs in the birth canal (score one for Kiernan: he doesn't have the cone head) and he didn't have time for a certain hormone to kick in that helps little bodies absorb the fluid properly.

Overall, and with another day's worth of perspective, we're hanging in there. He's such a tank compared to the "other" premie babies (I'm using that term very loosely here) that I just know he's going to be okay. They've implied they want to keep him in NICU until probably Monday but, like I said earlier, we'll know more tomorrow. Please keep our little one in your thoughts and prayers. It's been very hard for both of us to see him hooked up to tubes and IVs (he has an IV in his head!). I should get out the hospital this afternoon and we're hoping to get everything ready for him to come home to us very soon.