A stylin' wrap

Jack Henry has gotten all dressed up in his finest duds today, but the latest fashion in the NICU to complete a baby's evening attire is swaddling.

This style comes straight from the catwalks of Milan to you by our very own fashion correspondent / model, J. H. White.

J. H., please describe who you're wearing this evening.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Thanks, Stephen.

Tonight, I'm wearing a snow white, light fleece made of the finest vicuña wool. Notice the hand-stitched edging that adds panache, but a subtle refinement. As demonstrated in the pattern, you can clearly see the degree of mastery in the cutting and fusing by the migrant workers from Shēnzhèn. You can only pay top pennies per hour for this type of dedication.


Also, the designer comes from the studio of Dwell as part of line found exclusively at Tar-jay of Beverly Hills. These fleeces generally retail for upwards of $9.99 for three.


You can see how the fleece accentuates the sage green trimming of my body suit. This really brings out the yellow-green of the turtles of my onesie. This is truly all the rage!

Back to you, Stephen.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Thanks, J. H.

In our next upcoming fashion segment - nose tubes: how can you stylize your tegaderm tape in this season's colors.

Getting dressed up with no place to go

Jack Henry has gotten to the point where he is old enough and big enough (from a weight perspective) where he gets to try to regulate his own body temperature. This is one of his next, big milestones.


Until now, Jack Henry has had his body temperature regulated by his bed. In essence, the bed would be set at temperature of 36.5 celsius and Jack Henry would follow along. If his temperature dipped below a prescribed level, the bed, like a pizza oven, would warm him up. Since he's so deep dish, he never got too crusty - ok, ok, I think that I need to go eat dinner now.


Ahh, better finish up this post quick, so here we go. Instead of the bed warming and cooling him to a certain level, the bed is switched to a different setting with a lower temperature and his body is supposed to keep himself warm. He should be able to do this as he is almost 1,500 grams now. Gradually, the bed is being reduced in temperature by 0.5 celsius increments from 33.0 celsius with an end result of 28.0 celsius (close to room temperature).


In doing so, he gets to wear clothes (onesies). Additionally, we will swaddle him when he is taken out of the isolet for non-nurtitive sucking or kangaroo care.

The end goal is for Jack Henry to regulate his temperate so that he can go from the isolet to an open crib. This will most likely happen when he is at 1,800 grams.

After he achieves this, his next (and hopefully final) task will be able to breastfeed and bottle feed all of his meals (i.e. no feeding tube).

The feeding tube - in slow motion

Here are the pictures from the replacement of Jack Henry's feeding tube. As mentioned in the previous post, his tube was switched from the mouth to the nose. This is being done to help clear the pathway in the mouth for breastfeeding.

For the grandmas in the audience, Jack Henry was fine during this whole little process. He squinted his eyes and furrowed his brow just like you would if someone were to placing something in your nose. He didn't cry and as you can see, he was totally cool at the end and back to sleep.


First off, the nurse measures the length of the tube that needs to be inserted so it properly reaches his stomach. (Note the numbers on the tube.) Otherwise, the tube eithers ends in his esophagus (too short) or in his intestines (too long). Also, the nurse will check at the end to make sure the tube went into the stomach rather than in the lungs.


The measurement process is to stretch the tube across his face from the mouth to the ear and then from the ear along his chest to the stomach.


Then, thread the tube through the nose on down to the belly!


See - happy baby at the end!

An unobstructed view

Jack Henry was due to have his feeding tube replaced today. His orogastric tube is being replaced by a nasogastric tube. Translation: the tube that went through the mouth directly to the stomach is now being replaced with a tube that is threaded through the nose directly to the stomach. More pictures on that in a minute.

In the interim, here are some quicky shots of him without anything on his face so as to help you judge who he looks like.

After the head shave, I think he looks like former Houston Rocket / current TNT announcer, Jon Barry.

Oh, to be born today

When Elaine was first admitted into the hospital on January 4th, we were quite worried about what was to come. We didn't know if something eminent was about to happen with our son about to be delivered or not. So many things were flying at us so, so quickly.

Actually, we had just found out a little more than a week prior to expect a boy as Elaine's 20-week ultrasound had errantly led us to expect a little girl, which, of course, would have been a great delight just the same.

(Note to prospective parents: before you run out and buy pink everything when you are told that you are expecting a little girl, please realize that the 20-week ultrasound is correct only 80% of the time. We didn't run out to purchase pink thingies, but with the timing of life, Christmas happened to be the Tuesday before the follow-up 24-week ultrasound. Surprise, surprise, surprise! Oh, and if you happen to be wishing and hoping for a little boy, you should visit this doctor as he has a knack for bringing 'em home as he has three sons himself!)


So lots and lots of things running around our little brains as we are trying to balance elation, anticipation, fear, anxiety, hope, and, aw shucks, just slip your own favorite five adjectives here.

Since we were told not to pass go and not to collect $200, we went to the triage station on the 5th floor at Memorial Hermann where we happened to meet a wonderful soul in Nurse Melissa. As with many things in life, we can look back and see where the Holy Spirit intervenes and provides answers to questions yet asked. Nurse Melissa was the perfect medicine of comfort, patience and understanding. Even when she stabbed (just kidding, Nurse Melissa!!!), er, gave Elaine a 2 1/2 inch-long needle of steriods to the bum, she was soothing and helpful. (FYI - the steriods shot was to help Jack Henry's lungs to mature earlier than normal, not for him to hit 72 homeruns in a season - but it couldn't hurt!)

On Elaine's second night in the hospital, a very frightening scream was let out by a woman in the next room to ours. We knew right away what had happened as this triggered a flood of memories from the premature loss of our daughter four years prior.


With her mind focused on the desire to bring a child home, never once did Elaine complain during her modified bed rest prior to admission to the hospital, much less during her hospital stay. Through the many, many drugs that lead to tiredness, inability to focus her eyes, acid reflux, muscle soreness, etc, Elaine did whatever was necessary for Jack Henry to proceed along in utero. Odd as the doctors may have felt it to be, Elaine plugged ahead with working after I set up a wireless network in her hotel, um, hospital room. ;) One wonderful nurse after another (Stephanie, Nancy, Christina, Lara, Liz, to name a few) took wonderful care of us by helping us get a mini-fridge in the room, a TV-DVD combo, extra pillows and eggcrate for her mattress.

The days and weeks ahead moved slowly, but steadily. (The wine and beer in the room helped - a lot! Seriously.) Soon enough a month passed and Jack Henry chose to show up on the scene.

While this seems to be a retrospective of the month of January, during Elaine's time in the hospital sitting on the egg, we prayed and hoped that Jack Henry would wait for his debut closer to his original due date of mid-April.

When it became apparent that the time horizon was shrinking for the big day, I spoke with Dr. Cook about how great it would be for Jack Henry to be born on February 29th. Elaine didn't seem to agree with Dr. Cook and myself about the merits. To think, no one would ever forget his birthday, he would always have a built in ice breaker - loads of fun!

Obviously, it wasn't to be - no matter how much I tried to bribe the birth certificate people to make a slight change. Ha! Dr. Cook said that many parents prefer not to be born on a leap day.

This is my question to all of you - would you prefer to be born on a leap day or would you allow your child to be born February 29th? And if so, would you go the route of celebrating the birthday quadrennially or shift the date plus or minus one day?

Happy leap day!

Just a couple of snaps to post when we were changing out Jack Henry's bed.



He has been progressing well and is now considered Level 2 status, even though the doctors and nurses are cool with letting us remain in a Level 3 pod. This provides us the benefit of getting the 2 babies to 1 nurse ratio in Level 3 rather than going to 4-to-1 in Level 2.

Consequently, Jack Henry's bed was switched out partly because the warming system was not working properly and he was ready to move into a bed that does pop the lid for instant access (useful in cases of intibation or other invasive procedures). The equipment here at Memorial Hermann is top notch. I can't imagine going any place else as we have been very spoiled.

I personally blame the medical staff for our spoiling - yes, Dr. Ursula, Nurse Ashley, Nurse Amy, Nurse Kelli, Nurse Ashley (there are a lot of y'all), Nurse Erin, amongst many others. I sleep much better at night knowing that I don't have to take responsibility for you spoiling us!

Going bald! (Act 2 of a close shave)

Jack Henry's mohawk lasted all of a few minutes. It will interesting years from now if he posts picturs of himself getting another mohawk... let's hope not.

Now, a father-son moment that you are privy too...

Son, if you are reading this entry twenty years from now and thinking about rebelling with a mohawk or robotic appendage or piercing in your skull (whatever the future may hold), let me rule out the head shave. You are a handsome young man, but let's just agree that you're head isn't shave worthy. If you go naturally bald, then so be it. Yet, if you are thinking about shaving down to a mohawk or shaving it all off, trust me, you will quickly lose your status as the ladies man. Try to rebel with the robotic appendage - that would be cool and useful!

Without further ado, my son's head is shaved (gently though)...






... and yes, we did keep his hair and, no, you can't have it to make a voodoo doll.

Getting a true mohawk (Act 1 of a close shave)

Since Jack Henry got sidewalled due to a new IV site, he has finished his need for IVs as he is getting all of his nutrition through breastmilk and now fortified breastmilk.



Interesting fact: breastmilk contains 20 calories per ounce (30 ccs or 30 mls in an ounce). Fortification can add 20% to 50% more calories. Currently, Jack Henry is getting 20% fortification which brings his calories up to 24 calories per ounce.


As he is getting fed 28 ccs per feeding, the math says that he is getting 180 calories per day due to his eight feedings (every three hours). That's barely a couple of french fries, right?



In any case, without the need for IV sites, we are moving forward with cleaning up the bad haircut from before.



It's been funny to get loads and loads of advice on how to clean up the haircut. No, we didn't put a poll on the blog for it since it would be non-binding anyway. :)

Yet, the doctors and nurses were encouraging us to go full-blown mohawk (notice that there's no faux in the description). Apparently, this is a common option. Another choice is to let the patch grow in, but there's no guarantee there in terms of when it will come in. So behind door #3 is the full monty, er, shave. We'll have to see where we end up...


FYI - Elaine got the final decision, but she was tolerant to let her first husband (i.e. the current one) to have a bit of fun along the way. Muchas gracias to the two Nurse Ashleys for doing the haircutting without a drop of blood. No nickes, scratches or cuts - pretty darn impressive!

Several pictures are worth a few words

A quicky update filled with pictures of Jack Henry hanging out in his casa (aka isolet) with his buddy, Curious George...

When sucking at something is a good thing!

As Jack Henry keeps waddling through the milestones, his new challenge to face is adjusting to the idea of breastfeeding.


Fortunately, he has already been cueing us to his interest by frequently sticking his tongue out at us. When we see this, we will provide him a soothie (pacifier) and he gets the premise of sucking pretty easily. By the way, the kid has a helluva tongue!

Time for a sidebar...

I've been told that there are three types of tongues in the world. Since I have put this forth as a hypothesis and researched it (by randomly asking people - don't ask!), this is science in the making. The three tongues: the butt tongue, the cow tongue and the Gene Simmons tongue. Jack Henry must be ready to join a rock band because he's working the KISS "I wanna rock all night and party everyday".


And now, the rest of the story...

Actually, the funniest aspect is to watch him attempt the trifecta of "suck, swallow, and breathe". This is a skill that his brain is developing. Thus, you can actually observe as he starts with the pacifier in his mouth and he sucks, sucks, sucks... then his eyes get wide-open and he looks around for a moment as if to think "hmmm, I think that I'm missing something here - oh yeah, breathe, breathe, breathe" and that's what he does. And like the instructions on your shampoo bottles, he just go into repeat mode until he tires out (also, similar to actually following those shampooing instructions - ha!).


Now, as he is mastering the pacifier, it is time to take Jack Henry through a bit of a challenge. Yup, non-nutritive sucking. He sort of describes the experience himself, but I will share a bit more.


The idea is that he will learn the association of going to the breast to find food. So Elaine will go pump first and then hold him against her breast. He will then try to learn how to latch on to the nipple and gets a slight taste of breastmilk. As he is only currently getting breastmilk delivered directly to his stomach via OG tube, he hasn't yet tasted breastmilk directly. When Elaine and the nurses time his three-hour feeding with the non-nutritive sucking, he gets the sensation of fullness in the stomach, while also tasting breastmilk with the true association of its source. (Until now, a complete mystery to him, huh?!?)

Over the next couple of weeks, he will build up his strength, skill (timing the sucking and breathing), and success in being able to breastfeed on his own.

Day 24 and my escape plans have been foiled once again...

To all fellow babies in the NICU:

I have now been trapped in my clear cage now for 24 days. While my presidential campaign is off to a roaring start, the ladies in the smocks seem to mock me every three hours with their humiliating routine of stripping me naked to wipe my bare behind with a cold and wet cloth, sticking a cold probe that does God knows what in my arm pit, and then finally, they rotate me into a different positions even though I had been so comfortable before.

I would guess that the reason that these prison guards where clothes called smocks is because it actually is a shortened name for the practice of embarassing me in their creative manners - perhaps it stands for Shameless MOCKing.

They will rue the day when they started this game of torture! All I see out of them is laughter and I know that it's directed at me. Oh, the degradation!


Otherwise, my day in my cell has been the same as the other days in capitivity. First off, a warm plunge of some liquid substance is drained into my belly by the guards. I suspect that this is some sort of sleep serum as I always feel drowsy after imbibing it. Seemingly, they want me to sleep constantly as this drug is given to me every three hours. My only consolation is that I am able to strike some fear and revenge when my diaper is checked!

Today, although I had tried to escape through one of the hatches to my cage, it appears that the guards are on to my maneurs as they keep wedging me in to my bed with this dismembered arm.

Outside of the humiliation and torture that I have described above, I'm often visited by the same two familiar-looking people who don't seem to be part of the guard troops.

There is one who calls herself "Mommy" that looks really pretty and for some reason smells and sounds like I know her real well. I think that she may be the one that I escaped from over three weeks ago, but yet although she has returned in pursuit of me, I enjoy it immensely when she holds me and kisses my head. She must be playing mindtricks on me so that I will unknowingly trust her.

The other one is called "Daddy", but I'm never certain if that is actually him or not as he likes to hide behind his third eye. This is a clever disguise by him, but I will unmask him eventually. He shows up, but not as frequently as the woman aka "Mommy". He likes to smile at me in a mocking manner like the guards, but he appears mostly harmless. I am hopeful that he will seek mental attention by the guards as he seems quite goofy. In the least, I always feel relieved when the "Mommy" is with the "Daddy" since she makes me feel safe - again, the trickery!

Well, today was quite unusual. Instead of being released from my cage for being kangaroo'd, this "Mommy" held me differently. She still clenched me enough that I could not escape. Yet, this time, she held me in a comforting manner differently than before. When she brought me to rest on her skin, there was this pleasant tasting liquid there to sample. My suspicions were raised, but I was intoxicated by the experience and I was quite overwhelmed by all that was occuring. It seemed similar to the sleep serum that the prison guards have been thrusting upon me.

Occassionally, I would attempt to wiggle away, but I kept feeling compelled to return to the comfort, warmth and nourishment brought on only by this woman. It must be her soothing voice, or, no, some other wretched subliminal message that she coaxed into me while I slept in this womb of hers. Something, but I don't know quite what.

Eventually, I feel asleep... just as I thought that I can sneak away. Darn!

I'm just very thankful that this experience occurred with this "Mommy" creature rather than the "Daddy" fellow.

Allegedly, I hear rumors that these two along with some furry critters are my family.

I will relay another message soon after I achieve my escape!

Your comrade in arms,

Jack Henry

A new poll has been added

We have a new poll that you, his friends and family, can vote in.

As you can see in the upper-left of the blog, you are able to determine who Jack Henry actually looks like.

In the past few weeks, you have seen him grow, run for president, get his haircut and much, much more.

So now as he develops, you can tell him who you think he resembles!

Let your voice be heard!

Also, even though Jack Henry appears to be comfortably in the lead in his presidential race, this poll remains open, so if you haven't voted, please be sure to do so!

He values every vote you give him ... although he doesn't value them enough to pay you for them (i.e. Chicago-style). Ha!

Taking your email questions

You may wonder how Jack Henry is able to post to this blog. Now, you too can find out the truth through this unauthorized picture taken by a papa-razzo.


Due to other blackmail that we have on Jack Henry that we will save for when he gets married or elected, he has agreed to answer your questions in his blog.

If you have any questions, you can either add them in the comments section to this blog post or email them to him at jackhenrywhite[at]live[dot]com.

He will post his answers in a future post.

Unveiling of my campaign banner

Howdy, future constituents!

I appreciate the support that you have offered in my charge to be the nominee for president of the Rabbit A/B pod. With your support, I will lead our pod in defeating the Evil Doers.

Their reign of terrorist through partial head shavings and IV sticks in the middle of the night is too much to tolerate.

Remember - we did not choose to go to war against them ... they choose to strike first!

Only united as one will we win against in this War on Needles!


My opponent, Johilbar, thinks that this issue should be resolved through rounds of meetings as well as updates to policies and procedures manuals! My opponent will be soft on the nurs-istas! My opponent is only full of compromises (and pooh)!

Yet, I, fair citizens, will hunt down those who have an issued a fatwa against us babies! I will not stop until this mission is accomplished!

Separated at birth?

Although Jack Henry did get slightly de-monkey-ified with his first haircut / forehead shave, the reality is that he's a slightly hairy dude. :)


While this is completely normal, I sure enjoy having fun comparing him to another familiarly fury friend.


A quick note to appease those in the scientific community (and Elaine) that I'm not overly torturing my kid: the hair that is covering his body (um, especially his upper arms, back, shoulders, forehead (formerly), etc) is called lanugo. This is the hair that grows on babies in utero and is typically shed at 40 weeks of gestation. Since little Jack Henry decided to appear on the scene at 29 weeks, he's got a bit of time to knock the fur off. This hair functions as additional warmth until he builds up his needed fat deposits. Soon enough, this coarse, dark hair will be shed and replaced with the more commonly noticed vellus hair (peach fuzz).


Back to the point of this post, Jack Henry seems a bit separated at birth (but reunited in his isolet) to another certain little hairy creature. You can decide for yourself in this little retrospective set of pictures.


(By the way, Jack Henry's response when he first saw Curious George in his isolet was something along the lines of surprise, worry and fear mixed into one as his thoughts turned toward this large monkey coming to get him... perhaps his words would have been "Holy, Pooh!")


And with all due respect to PETA, no monkeys were harmed during the photographing in preparation of this post and this post was prepared in front of a live studio audience!