Sunday, November 13, 2005

Yesterday afternoon my little lowercase was weighed again. And I am a bad mother because I can't remember the weight in grams. It was either 1145 or 1150; I'm not sure which it was called on. But his nurse did something wonderful. She pushed the button that told me his weight in pounds and ounces: 2 lb 8.6 oz. We are inching ever closer to his birth weight and I am absolutely delighted!

Timmy's feeds are now up to 14 cc/3 hours...at least through his 9am feeding today. At noon, his protocol goes up again.

He is beginning to wake up shortly before his feeds and several times the nurses have seen him rooting. He knows. He knows! When I hold him as he feeds, if my hand is anywhere near his mouth, he pulls one of my fingers in and sucks vigorously for a couple seconds -- until he realizes that it is producing nothing and what the hell? If I can't get anything, I'm not doing this! He is the same with his pacifier.

We have begun to have a few more instances of decreased O2 saturation at the beginning of feeds (most likely associated with the beginning of sucking while he is being fed through the NG tube). He has also had a few more bradys near the ends of feeds, associated with acid reflux. He is getting reglan 30 minutes before every feeding and the doctors assure me that both of his issues will begin to go away with the medication and his increasing age.

His overnight nurse told my family yesterday that he is the cutest baby she's seen in a very long time. She assured us that he is currently the cutest baby in the NICU -- and then she said, "Believe me, we get some UGLY babies in here. Yours is one of the absolute cutest I think I have ever seen." And she repeated that several times throughout the evening. Nothing like external validation to prove you aren't as biased as you thought you were ;)

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Oh they are right he is pretty darn cute! Getting cuter every day.

[ Permalink ] posted by cat : 11:12 AM

Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful son, and best wishes for a short, uneventful NICU stay.

My son was born at 32w 4d after preterm labor similar to yours, except that they were able to slow labor for two and a half days with the Mag. He spent 12 days in the NICU.

He will be ten months this week, and aside from being around the 25% for size he is perfectly healthy and normal.

I will say, the first four months were very, very hard. We struggled with reflux, milk protein allergy (I had to eliminate even trace amounts of dairy from my diet), and hours and hours of screaming every day. The tide turned at around 6 months, and it just keeps getting better.

[ Permalink ] posted by lisa : 5:36 PM