PNP (Pediatric Nurse Practitioner)

This is one of those things that should be shouted from the moutaintops. Heralds should go through the city singing songs, painters should be painting pictures, and poets should be writing sonnets, and yet this little dabbler in prose finds himself unable to give this quite the punch it deserves.
It is official, Mary Jane has passed her boards!!! She is now a board certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner!!!
Some of you looonnngg time readers will remember that Mary Jane graduated with her Masters in Nursing back in the beginning of August. Doing this is kind of like graduating from law school. You have the degree but you can’t do anything with it until you have passed the big test (in the case of law, the bar exam, in this case “boards”). When Mary Jane graduated she had an elaborate plan to take care of the boards. She, in her methodic way was going to set up a strict study plan and nock that test out the first day they would allow her to take it. And because Mary Jane is the sort of person who does this she would have studied every conceivable question and then found a handful of questions that were not conceivable and studied them as well. However, life took a turn (which is really the only reason you ended up reading this blog) and suddenly Mary Jane found herself putting the boards off to the latest possible date that she could. And her strict study regimen? Out the window. There was no time to study and if there were a few minutes to study…well it’s kind of hard to focus when your daughters are in the NICU (trust me). So studying really didn’t happen much. Mary Jane was very freaked out going into the test, but once again the world was shown the great deal of intellegince God blessed my wife with, because she passed!
What really made me happy was how excited the NICU nurses got about it. I think everything that needs to be said about how wonderful my wife is might be illustrated by how people respond to her. Everyone loves her. As soon as the test was over (it was a computer test and they told her immediately she passed) Mary Jane called the hospital room to tell me she passed (I was holding Emma Jane at the time). The moment the room phone rang all the nurses in our area of the unit came running into the room to find out whether she passed. When I nodded that she had (still talking to Mary Jane) they sprang to action. Denise started by putting up a sign and then writing with a dry erase Marker on the room doors while Jen started cutting up disposable isolation gowns to make streamers. Other nurses grabbed gloves and blew them up like balloons, while still others grabbed baby bottles, filled them with candy and hung them up around the room.The PNP was done in surgical tape

Eventually real streamers were found and things got even "streamier"

All in all it was a good day.

Congratulations Mary Jane! We are all proud of you.

I think Parker's just lonely...

So I have decided that Parker is just lonely. All this fussing is just her way of saying "Pay attention to me!!! Please!!! NOW!!!"

Why have I decided this? Because 90% of the time when she is fussing I can calm her down pretty quickly by doing this...

I simply get right up in her face and pretty quickly she calms down. If she is even remotely awake she opens her eyes and looks all around at my face and just gets a content look on her face. It doesn't work 100% of the time. If you're stomach's empty then no amount of me getting in your face is going to solve that. It will still be empty. Of course I imagine if you were really hungry and I did that to you it would shock/creep you out enough that you might forget about your hunger for awhile...so maybe it is working then and I don't know it.

It's pretty funny, because it doesn't work as well on Emma Jane. She seems to like it and be calm, but she fusses less and if I do it when she is fussing she looks at me with a "What is this supposed to do to help? My diaper's still wet, I'm still hungry...you haven't fixed anything. Why don't you go do something and THEN come be all cute with me. Sheesh"

I'm hoping this method of calming Parker down will work for a long time. I can just picture her being 17 years old and having her heart broken by some stupid boy and I pull her over and stick my eye right next to hers. She'll freak out and say "Dad! What are you doing?" And I'll say, "Calming you down?"

"What in the world makes you think that would calm me down?!?"

"Well it always used to."

"When dad? When did it calm me down? When I was a baby? When I was your little baby in the NICU? Well I have news for you dad, I'm all grown up now." "Honey, you will always be my little baby in the NICU" "Ug (storms off) no one understands me"

Oh the fun to look forward to ;)

On a more serious note. Please keep Camryn Akerson in your prayers. She is having surgery tomorrow. For those of you who do not know she is the beautiful, precocious, smart as a whip, 2 and half year old daughter of Scott and Val Akerson. They are members at Salem. Scott is the principal at the school as well the part time 8th grade teacher. Camryn has had a rough go of it in her short life and she (and her whole family) could really use your prayers. If you would like to learn more about them check out their website http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/camrynakerson

blessings

Uncle Jason and Aunt Mary Jane

At 6:30 am this morning (Wednesday November 5th) William Travis Orr was born to Heather "Broge" Orr (my little sister) and Travis Orr.

Will was due today so...he's not taking after his cousins at all so far. We're thrilled and can't wait to see him, however...it will probably be a while.

Bottles

Per Molly's request:
Some pictures of us feeding via bottles. They're just getting started. Neither takes a full bottle yet, but both are making a good show of it so far. These aren't the best pictures...cause...you know how hard it is to take a picture of yourself feeding a baby with a bottle. Or maybe you don't, but...well, it's hard

Grrrrrrrr

Dear Ben Ernst,

Thanks for all the help, support, and prayers you and your family given us during all this. I wanted to take a brief moment to talk to you about your chosen field. Now I know you have no desire to do pediatrics, but if by chance you suddenly have a change of heart, and decide that you want to spend you life starring into the eyes of babies, if by chance you go a step further and decide to be a fellow over at Children's then here are some advice:
Let's say you get assigned a preemie to do an eye exam on. Let us even go so far as to say you are assigned twins. While we're on the subject let's go one step further and say these twins had already had eye exams twice before, and while they were unpleasant they took about 2 minutes and left no real marks on the baby. If all this were then case then please do not

a) march into a room while the mother is nursing and make her stop in order to do immediately do the eye exam

b) also in the list of do nots....if the the average exam takes 2 minutes and you find yourself running over ten minutes and realize you have no idea what you are doing...stop

c) when the mother asks how their eyes look don't be rude

d) and most importantly, if the baby you're working with starts off by looking like this

don't leave her looking like this:

Just a couple of thoughts to help you in your future endeavours.

With love,

the broges

Milestones!!!

Mercies continue to rain down upon us.
Rather than ruin all the fun by shouting this latest (and really great) milestone through the blog. I give you these pictures of Parker (first) and Emma Jane (second) to look at.
We think it should be obvious.

!!!!! Pretty great isn't it. It began on Friday, but I didn't want to say anything at first because I wanted to make sure it stuck. They handled things like little champs.

Here's a couple more pictures. These are taken right after bath time. Again, Parker is the first, and Emma Jane is the second picture

Welcome to the 101st post.

Today is November 1st 2008, exactly five years since I proposed to Mary Jane. For those of you keeping track, she said yes.

Some how 101 combined with this anniversary screamed “time to look back before we go forward” to me. With that in mind…
We were living in Chicago at the time. Mary Jane was working at Children’s Memorial Hospital and worked a 12 hour shift that day. She thought we were going to a Halloween party that night. What she didn’t know was that I had gotten a hold of her spare key and used it to get into her little one room apartment. When she came home she expected to find a dark empty apartment, but what she found instead was a room full of candles and flowers with me in the middle holding…yep, you guessed it, a small rabid pitbull. Okay…it was a ring. Now to really understand what happened next you have to know something about Mary Jane in Chicago. She walked to work and carried this big ole backpack with her. The thing was filled with…I never really knew what, but it was stinking heavy and when it was on her back she was forced to hunch over. When Mary Jane opened the door and saw me standing there she stood up which off centered her balance and she fell backward out the door. She righted herself, came in, and there was much laughter, jumping, and joy.

Now, while I’m tempted to go on this way and narrate the last five years it would take…five years…and probably only be of interest to Mary Jane and myself, so I’ll skip to a look back at the events a little more directly related to our current situation.

Some of you may remember that we had a lot of trouble getting pregnant. We hadn't given up hope but we were pretty near the end of the line when Mary Jane got pregnant. Here's a picture of us the night we found out. Mary Jane had once again just come home from work and taken "the test". Once again there was much joy, laughter, and prayers of thanks.

Having tried so long, and so many people having been praying for us we decided it to have a little fun announcing the pregnancy to everyone. We sent out this postcard

and used it to launch this blog. (if you look back this postcard is the first post)

Things seemed to be going smoothly, there was very little to blog about, until Thursday morning August 28 at 3 in the morning when Mary Jane's water broke. Interestingly enough Tuesday we had a doctor's appointment where the doctor had given us an "A+" and told us things "couldn't be going better." Just goes to show you...

The rest is pretty well documented on the blog. We went to MoBap and were transferred to Barnes because it is attached to Children's. The hope was that once we stopped the initial labor that maybe we could just live in the hospital for a month or so.
Mary Jane was hooked up to a monitor for the first 36 hours or so. We made it past the 48 hour window, she wasn't having any contractions and everything looked "good." We were just settling in to what we hoped would be a long stay when Parker's placenta abrupted and we were suddenly in a mad dash for the operating room.

Before I could blink I was left in a room and handed a "bunny suit" to put on. Of course no one actually gave me any instruction on how to put the thing on. I guess they figured it was obvious, but... not to me. I put it on backwards.
No one told me. Not in all the time I stood around waiting did anyone say...oh and by the way...you look like a tool. I just stood there waiting...and waiting...and waiting. And then I got sick of waiting. They told me it would be about ten minutes until I could go in. At ten minutes and twenty-two seconds I decided there had been entirely too much waiting going on and I head out of the room and began to wait in the hallway. When that didn't send the promised person to send me into Mary Jane I went to the nurses' station. One of the nurses said she would go into the OR and see if I could come in yet. I waited a few more minutes and then decided I would at least stand in the hallway that lead to the OR so I could see the nurse coming. When that didn't get things done I began to move towards the door asking every employee who passed by if I could go in yet. I have no idea how many employees finally went in to ask but they all did and everyone in the OR soon new that "dad" wanted in. By the time they finally came to get me they didn't have far to go...my face was pressed up against the door. This entire time I was standing there with my "bunny suit" on backwards. When did I find this out? After the surgery. After Mary Jane was sewn back up. After Parker had been wheeled out, while they were trying to reintubate Emma Jane (who successfully extubated herself three times. They were evidently having trouble controlling the flailing arms of an extremely powerful 14 week premature baby). While we were waiting Mary Jane suddenly looked at me and laughed "is that on backwards?"
So, even in the midst of fear, confusion, and pain, my beautiful wonderful wife was able to muster a laugh.
That question I asked five years ago...best question I ever asked.

What is this picture all about? It is a photo taken during our infant massage therapy class with the ocupational therapist. What am I doing with my pinky? I have no idea. Telling the occupational therapist to hang loose? Maybe I'm trying to convey the "hang loose" mentality to Emma Jane. Really, really don't know.