We said goodbye to our long-term nursery roommate yesterday as he prepared to finally go home. It’s a happy/sad time when the babies you’ve gotten to know get to leave the hospital, especially when you’ve spent a lot of time with them. We’re very happy that Connor is ready to be with his mom and dad, but we’ll miss seeing his smiling face every day. Good luck little guy!
Colin continues to do well — we’re definitely on an optimistic arc right now. He is down to 1.5 liters on the oxygen, and his nurse today was going to ask the doctor about dropping it to 1 liter, because his numbers have remained strong. (His nurse overnight had him at 1 liter all night, but because the orders are for Colin to be at 1.5, his day nurse bumped him back up.)
At this rate, I guess it’s possible we might be able to get Colin off the oxygen, or at least off the high-flow oxygen pretty quickly. I don’t want to get my hopes up, though.
Colin continues to do pretty well with the bottle, taking between 10 and 25 ml each time it’s offered. This afternoon I decided it was time to try breastfeeding, but he was sleepy and breathing kind of heavy, so his nurse wanted to wait.
We compromised with letting him try to latch on while feeding him through his tube. This was further complicated by the fact that his feeding tube is currently through his mouth, rather than his nose. But he managed to latch on a couple of times and get a few sucks in before giving up. Tomorrow morning I'll try for real.
We have a care conference with Colin’s doctor on Tuesday, and we’re hoping to set up a plan for what Colin needs to achieve before he can come how and how we’re going to get there. I hope to come out of that with a better sense of how much longer he is likely to need to be in the hospital, knowing of course, that everything could change.
On the home front, Veronica has entered a stage where she doesn’t want to sleep unless one of us is holding her. That’s okay some of the time, but when we’re trying to do something — like, say, eat dinner — that get’s to be a problem. We’ll have to see how long this lasts.
Otherwise, she continues to eat much and often. As a result, she is growing like a weed. If the growth chart I checked today is correct, she is at around 5% on the uncorrected chart (not adjusted for her prematurity, but just based on her actual age) and is in the 75th percentile on the adjusted chart. (Colin is still below 5% on the adjusted chart, just in case you were wondering.)
Veronica has much more alert awake time now. She is getting very strong, and likes to lift her head up and look around. One advantage of spending time in the NICU is the babies get to spend a lot of time on their tummies (the 24 hour nursing staff and monitoring makes the threat of SIDS somewhat irrelevant) so their muscles are already starting to develop.
With the extra alert time, we’ve now brought out the play mat, swing and bouncy seat. She generally ignores the things hanging above her head, but she will occasionally bat at them — especially if Ethan is trying to get her attention with the toys. I can definitely see some progress in her interested in things, and the reaching and paying attention that comes along.
So while we have no idea what’s in store when Colin comes home, I would venture to say that we’re approaching something of a routine with Veronica. Okay, approaching may be too strong a word: we’re sneaking up on a routine, but it’s still around the corner. We’ve caught site of routine, but it remains just out of reach.
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