Almost 5 pounds!!!!

Nate is 4 pounds 15 ounces!! He took most of his feeding by bottle tonight and Lynn said he took all of it this morning. He is now allowed to have his full feeding by bottle two feedings a day. He is still occasionally (about twice a day) dropping his oxygen level and heart rate, but is able to recover fairly quickly. His eye exam was repeated this week and is back to a 0/5 rating, so his eyes are doing better. His hearing test was questionable, but will be repeated again to retest.

We hope to break the 5 pound barrier in the next couple of days!

Patrick and Leeann

Beginning to tackle the last hurdle...

...today Nate had his first feeding from a bottle. He gets 8 feeds a day by the tube. Right now 2 of those he can get 1/2 of that feeding by bottle. He did well with his first feeding for Lynn this afternoon and took the bottle again for me this evening. He takes a little while to get interested in the bottle, but once he does, he takes off feeding well. I spoke to the Nurse Practitioner today and if he continue to do well and tolerates increased feedings in volume, he will be well on his way to discharge.

Tonight his weight was 2160 grams or 4 pounds 12 ounces.

More updates to come.

Leeann and Patrick

This weekend....

...we were so happy to be surprised when Lynn, Nate's primary nurse from the first floor, was his nurse this weekend. She requested to follow Nate to the third floor for the remainder of his stay. She said she "wasn't ready to let him go". I was so happy to hear this that I cried when I found out. We love Lynn and she knows Nate so well that we are always comforted in the knowledge that she has him under her watchful eye.

Today we gave Nate another tub bath. He was very alert and verbal today and watched us closely. He is still rather perplexed at this bath thing. The look he gets on his face when we put him in the water is priceless.

Here are some recent pics- he is growing more every day. 4 pounds 4 ounces last count.

Leeann and Patrick

Moving on up....

...well, Nate was transferred to the 3rd floor NICU today. This is supposed to be a good thing. It means he is getting healthier and a step closer to going home. We were told when he was born that this was the normal progression. It does sadden us to leave the first floor NICU though. We will lose Lynn, his primary nurse, and we love her. We are very comfortable with most of the other nurses in the first floor NICU. I am sure we will get to know the 3rd floor nurses as well, but it just a comfort zone thing.

On another note, Nate no longer has a nasal cannula- he is breathing totally on his own with no oxygen or air support. He is still learning to maintain his own temperature and occasionally needs the warmer still. Soon he should be able to be transferred to a crib when he can self regulate his temperature. Today they started adjusting his feeding to start getting him used to having more food in his stomach at once, so maybe soon he can start to learn how to bottle feed. Then he needs to be able to feed on adequate amounts at one time. This is the next major hurdle we need to get through before he can come home. I think it will take a few weeks to get there.

We are definitely closer to coming home- We can see the light at the end of this long tunnel.

Leeann and Patrick

First tub bath...

...today Patrick and I gave Nate his first tub bath. Well, his first plastic bucket bath. We swaddled him in a thin blanket and submerged him chest deep in a warm water bucket. While one of us held his upper torso, the other one bathed him. He seemed to not mind the water. He never cried and appeared comfortable, even relaxed. He did get a little upset when we took him out of the warm water to dry off, but he quickly settled down.

Here are some pictures from Saturday.

Nate has...

... a double chin...lol! He is now 3 pounds 11 ounces. He did start on the Prevacid for the acid reflux a couple of days ago and is having fewer episodes of dropping his oxygen level. Now we need to get him off of the supplemental air via the nasal cannula. Once this is off, they can start working on teaching him to suck and swallow.

Another thing I would like to see is for them to start working on getting him out of the isolette into a regular crib. For him to do this, he has to be able to maintain his temperature without a warmer. They will have to decrease the temperature in the warmer gradually to see how well he handles it.. One of the discharge criteria is he has to be able to maintain his own temperature. ( along with breathing without support and feeding on his own).

This is such a slow process, but there is daily progress. We will keep you updated.

Patrick and Leeann

Another first.....

.....Nate pooped on me today.

Mommy

Below....

...are 15 new pictures. Don't forget to click on them to enlarge them if you want.

More yet....

More....

In these you can see Aunt Carla holding Nate for the first time. Also, you can see the scar from his PDA surgery is healing nicely! We are lucky to get some pics with his eyes open!

Some pictures from the past week....

Some slight bumps in the road.......

...but no too bad. The past few days, Nate has been having slight drops in his oxygen saturation level. There could be several reasons, which they are slowly ruling out. His blood work was very good, his chest x-ray was good, so this basically ruled out infection. He had a 4 ounce weight gain over 2 days, which is a lot. They gave him some Lasix today to get rid of any excess fluid in case it was fluid that could be causing the dip in oxygen. Another option is Reflux- (acid reflux). This can cause him to spit up some acid and drop his oxygen in response. They put in a different feeding tube that passes his stomach into his duodenum to help lessen this, but today I was holding him and witnessed a classic Reflux episode. He hiccuped a few times, then coughed , followed by dropping his oxygen level and heart rate. I am convinced that the oxygen issue is related to the reflux and have requested that they start him on Prevacid, an acid reducer. Hopefully they will do this tomorrow and we will see improvement soon. We had a good visit today and sang the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and Guns and Roses "Sweet Child Of Mine" -- he will be musically well rounded. Next time we will do a little Neil Diamond and Motley Crue....lol.