Jamie and Tom FAQ

In Jamie's case, there is a passageway through which the testes descend. This is supposed to close up once they have descended. However, in Jamie's case it has stayed open and some of his intestines have ended up in his scrotum. Eugh! It's fairly simple to fix, and generally doesn't deteriorate rapidly or cause any problems other than discomfort, so it's likely to get mended a couple of weeks before he comes home.

continuous positive airway pressure

A device that squirts air down the patient's nose in an attempt to keep the lungs and airways inflated, to reduce the effort required to breath.

Also, a way of confusing Google's adsense, to ensure that you get lots of ads for methods of reducing snoring in adults.

We're going to see if my wife's employer will match any donations we collect, so if you want to send a cheque our way, mail me on a-n-t at l-o-a-d-t-r-a-x dot c-o-m for an address or a sort number + account and we'll forward it on. Or, mail me for the address of the unit and you can send it to them direct. Or, just give blood or send cash to your local baby unit rather than ours. Or hand some spare cash over to the Red Cross - preferably marked 'for disaster relief'.

I gave up with paypal as their charges are /really/ high and it's hard for me to get the money out, particularly if you pay by credit card.

The ads are just a way of getting a little more cash for the unit; google pay a few cents each time someone clicks on an ad on the site. You can also go through the google search on my page and if you click on the ads there it sends a few cents this way. Don't go beserk though as they register multiple clicks per PC as attempts to falsely collect money :-)

This was asked in relation to Jamie in particular.

If you'd seen him, you'd be able to guess which bits hurt - it's getting better, but his back was one giant bruise, going well down into the skin. It was leaking fluids and blood, and it was hugely fortunate that it didn't get infected.

Another big clue to when they hurt is that they cry - it's worth remembering that despite their prematurity, they are still real living babies ! The ventilation tube means that you can't normally hear them, but they open their mouths wide, screw their eyes up and wave thier arms around if they are really hurting. You've no idea how hard it is to watch that knowing that you can't do anything about it.

Why thank you :-)

It's a panasonic DMC-FZ5 . I ordered it in january expecting to get a few months to learn how it worked before the babies arrived. It arrived in the morning, the babies arrived that night :-O

Luckily, it's very easy to use, and is really quite powerful too - I'm well impressed. The image quality is excelent, especially for a 12x optical zoom / 5mp camera.

Given enough incentive, I'm sure I can take some photos to order :-)

I wish we knew :-)

Typically they are in intensive care (ie, assisted breathing, managed blood chemistry) for about 6-8 weeks. Assuming good progress, they would go to the high dependancy nursery and then the special care unit. The nurses expect special care babies to leave on or about their due date if they are well enough - they need to be able to breathe, feed and maintain temperature, and be of reasonable weight (say 4-5 pounds)

The consultants won't tell us any dates, as they don't want to get our hopes up in case there are any serious setbacks.

Look at the photos :-)

They are like full term babies, except they are a lot skinnier and a lot smaller. Full term babies lay down fat in the last few weeks in the womb, which our 24 weekers haven't had chance to do. Now they are 10 days old, they are starting to put fat down. At birth, they had so little fat that their skin was transparent - they looked very red and their skin was extremely delicate.

An adult hand would make a comfy chair for them. At 10 days old, they weigh about 800-900g and are about 9-10" long. Can't really get precise measurements yet !

This is a pseudo-blog to hold FAQs for jamie-and-tom.blogspot.com .