Surgery #2

Hi Everyone,

Our family had another interesting week! Both boys have been steadily progressing - gaining weight (Ethan now at 4lb 5oz and Caleb at 3lb 10oz), getting weened down from their oxygen, getting more food with each feeding, and even getting speech therapy so they can soon start feeding from a bottle. All very good and positive steps.

The boys have also been getting visits from an eye doctor, originally every other week and then every week, to check for something called Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). Basically, he has been checking on how their eyes are developing and to see they show signs of this issue that is common in premature babies. The first few check ups went fine, but a couple weeks ago signs of ROP began to show up. In the weeks that followed, the ROP progressed to the point where late this week the doctor decided that laser surgery was needed to fix the problem. That surgery, for both boys, happened today.

Both of them were anesthesized and put back on ventilators temporarily before the surgery. Each eye took about half an hour to complete, so after about two hours they were done. It went well for both of them and they are now recovering and coming off of the anesthesia. The only hiccup for either of them was that one of the meds that they use to put them under also caused Caleb to have some small seizures, so he was given meds to stop those as well before it was done. Because of that, his initially recovery took a bit longer than Ethans, but he is now back on track.

Hopefully in the next day or so both of them will again be back off the ventilator and back to their main jobs of getting stronger, breathing more consistently, and learning to bottle feed.

One week from tomorrow they will be three months old and we are going to post some pictures at that time to show how far they have come! Keep praying and lets get these boys home soon!