No gain baby

Just when you feel like your worries are going away, along comes something new. We’ve been very focused on Colin’s lungs and getting him off the ventilator (and eventually off the oxygen all together). I’m happy to report that he is still doing well with this. 

Unfortunately, our hopes that he would start to gain weight once he was off the vent and into a nursery haven’t panned out. While he is up from the lowest point he dropped to, he has not regained everything he lost let alone made progress toward getting bigger. The last three days, in fact, he has weighed exactly the same (approximately 2 pounds 4 ounces). So we’re now starting to worry about this. 

His doctor is concerned too, and is looking into options to try and jump start Colin’s growth again. One possibility is to give him high-calorie formula every other feeding. While I would prefer to have Colin be able to have an all-breastmilk diet, I certainly am in favor of anything we can do to help him grow. And unfortunately, they just can’t boost the calorie and fat content of the breastmilk to a high enough level.

Come on Colin, grow. Grow!

On the bright side, Colin is doing much better in other ways now that he is in the nursery. He doesn’t get as angry or agitated, and when he does get upset, he is much easier to calm back down. He is getting a lot more sleep, which will help his development, and now has some periods where he is alert and quiet. All good things.

Veronica is doing well too. She is a little congested and sneezing a lot (her first cold, I guess), which sometimes interferes with her taking the bottle or nursing. But we’ve been managing around it. Yesterday she nursed for a feeding and a half, but only took about 15 ml by bottle when John fed her. But we’ll get there before too long, I’m sure. She is still about two weeks ahead of the game in terms of when they normally start the babies on a bottle or nursing.

Having both babies in the same nursery is starting to give me a taste of what is to come when they come home. Twice this morning while I was holding Veronica, I had to also try to calm Colin down because he was unhappy. Eventually I put Veronica back in her crib so I could hold Colin, only to have to do the reverse and move over to soothe her back to sleep. Let’s hope that practice makes perfect (or at least modestly competent).