How low can he go?

Not much lower, as it stands. Yes, Colin has finally reached the bottom of his oxygen levels. Last night, when I left, he was at 21% oxygen (room air) with only 1/8 liter flow. After this, it’s time to breathe on his own!  

Actually, Colin is pretty much breathing on his own already — he pulls the cannula out of his nose so often that the settings now provide more of a suggestion of air in the neighborhood of his nose, rather than actually sending anything into his lungs. When I spoke with the doctor on Saturday, he said that Colin probably would only need to stay on this setting for a day or so, as long as he seems to be tolerating it. Yippee!

Colin is also off formula and back on all breast milk. We’re still fortifying the milk to 24 calories (it’s only 20 calories in its natural state) to help him gain weight, but at least he no longer is getting different tastes at each feeding. Some of the nurses think that Colin is particularly sensitive to taste and that may be contributing to his lack of interest in the bottle.

And he is starting to do better with the bottle — his last hurdle to overcome before he can head home. He’s up to taking about half of his feeds entirely or very close to entirely by bottle. (Still no interest in breastfeeding, but at least he’s eating.) So, we are getting close (again) to being able to bring him home. 

Because he’s getting older, Colin is starting to be fussier in the crib. To spare the nurses (who spend a lot of time holding him when we’re not there), I brought in a vibrating bouncy seat for him — just like his friend Connor had before he went home. 

We tried it out for about 5 minutes last night, and Colin really seemed to like it. One of the toys hanging down from the overhead bar is an elephant with a mirror on the back side. When I put Colin in his seat, the mirror was facing him, and he immediately started reaching for it to see the “other baby.” I used some of our rings to lower the toys so his little arms could reach them, and he spent the whole time staring at that baby in the mirror and trying to touch him.

On the home front, Veronica and Ethan both have/had colds. Ethan seems to be getting over his, but Veronica still sounds like a pig hunting truffles at night. John and I have been taking turns sleeping with her so the other one can get some sleep, and last night I almost moved out to the couch and left her the entire queen-sized bed to herself. But I managed to fall back to sleep. 

We have our first appointment at the hospital’s preemie follow-up clinic on Friday. Veronica’s doctor will decide whether to discontinue her caffeine in anticipation of (we hope) getting her off the monitor before too long. Fingers crossed on that one — we really would like to minimize how long we have two babies on monitors.

We said goodbye to another of our favorite roomies last night. Little Israel got to go home with his mommy at dinner time. He was one of our roomies for about a month — pretty much all of his life so far. We wish them the best of luck on getting adjusted to life on the outside. And another of our off-and-on roomies — Jowell — went upstairs to pediatrics until he’s ready for discharge. So all of our baby buddies are gone now. I hope we will be gone soon too.