Day 15

I cannot believe Julius has been in Hospital for two weeks already. Perhaps this time will go faster than I originally anticipated. I am thankful for that, because we sure want him home...

Julius is recovering from an IV infiltration. The "safer" IV that I wrote about earlier actually ended up giving him a terrible infection in his abdomen. He was swollen and getting abscesses where the IV was. It ended up causing him to digress a little; he needed help breathing again, was on antibiotics until yesterday, and lost quite a bit of weight due to them not feeding him (they wanted his body to focus on getting better first). He is now on the upswing, though. I am afraid he will have this problem with IVs all his life as I have an infiltration about 5 out of 7 times when I get an IV. Poor guy :(. I gave him some bad genes. His belly is almost completely healed and it looks like they will not have to bring "plastics" in to get a look at him. His skin should heal up just fine. He also graduated to the cradle. He is holding his temperature wonderfully in his new home, which gives us more hope of an early homecoming.

It's crazy how plump he's gotten...okay, maybe it'll be awhile before he is "plump", but he has definitely filled out in the cheeks. I just want to kiss them all the time. Anyway, he's just a few grams below his birth weight, so he is definitely gaining weight steadily; another thing they want to see before he comes home.

This week has been a little hard. I think all the severity of the complications and possible outcomes has finally caught up to me. God gave me the strength to carry Julius for longer than seemed humanly possible considering the circumstances, but now, my cup needs filled. I've needed a lot more sleep and a lot more rest. It has been a hard road, but we are still so very Thankful.

Here are some more photos to satisfy your "cuteness" need today :).