July 9, 2008

I spoke to Kate, Brandon's night nurse, a few minutes ago to see how his night was. She said he was great. Nothing new to report which is actually a good thing.

His doctor called yesterday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. to tell us that he will probably need a blood transfusion in a few days. This is completely normal for preemies. They get blood taken constantly to check for different things and at such a small size it is hard for the blood to come back so sometimes the red blood cell count goes down which is why they do transfusions. They said that babies respond very well to transfusions. I found out that Brandon has AB positive blood.

We had an exciting night at our 8:00 p.m. visit. Kate showed Stu and I how to take Brandon's temperature, how to weigh him, how to change his diaper, and how to lift him to be weighed. I did everything that Kate showed us how to do last night. Stu is going to do it this afternoon. It seems we will get to do it everyday when we are here during one of the times that they do these things. They do it at 8:00, 12:00, and 4:00 (every 4 hours). It was so nice to be able to do some things with Brandon. I also got to give him a kiss before I put him back down. We got to see Brandon naked for the first time and without his hat. He has a full head of hair but not too thick so he may lose some. You can see his hair in some of the pictures that I am posting from last night. We also had our first family picture taken.