From the African Safari to the Australian Outback

August 5 8:45 pm

For the past six weeks and two days the Thompson twins have resided in the UCD Med Center NICU......more specifically they have taken up residence in the Lion room. I don't recall if I've ever mentioned this before so here goes.....the new UCD Med Center's NICU has only been open for about three years. It's actually really kinda cool. Each room has huge double glass doors that are etched in glass with a specific animal. There are no room numbers......they are officially called by the name of the animal etched on the doors. Well the boys have been in the room with a Lion on the doors, thus they have been living in the lion room.......until today......for Tyler at least, a big change has occurred tonight. We have always been told that they will try to keep the boys together as much as possible and try to leave them in the Lion room as long as possible. However, given that it seems that the most sick preemies wind up in the Lion room, if they have been somewhat stabilized, and a sicker baby needs the bed, then they will have to move the boys. Well tonight that exact situation presented itself. All the beds in the Lion room are full and a new sick baby needs to come in. Who's the most stable micro-preemie in the room???? That would be Tyler Johnathon Thompson. He has been moved to the Koala room. So the good news is that they consider him stable enough to move him. He is still very much in the NICU......in fact the Koala room and the Lyon room share a glass door. Although he will be a further distance away ( he's actually about thirty feet from Parker) there is actually a direct line of sight now from Parker's incubator to Tyler's. The other good news is that is seems that the Koala room may be somewhat quieter than the Lion room and thus a little easier for the big guy to get some rest. The bummer is that they are somewhat separated now. We will actually have to walk more than ten feet and through the glass doors to get from one boy to the other......I'm not liking that, but at least the move is due to positive reasons. Both boys had pretty quiet days. Although I had to put Tyler back in his incubator pretty quickly after starting to hold him as he just wasn't handling it very well. Heather on the other hand got to hold Parker for an hour and a half!!!! The room was very active and busy with a lot of people today for quite a while, but eventually settled down for some quality time with the boys. Both boys had some ups and downs while we were there, but overall not a bad day. Sorry no new pics.....in all the commotion none were taken.....I'll post some tomorrow of Tyler's new "crib".....man is that a play on words!!!