Today marks the start of week 4 in the NICU. It's hard to believe you're already 3 weeks old! But you've sure made some great progress in three weeks. Your latest accomplishment is taking 68% of your food by mouth! That's right - 68%!!! One of the nurses called you Mr. Piggy yesterday - I told her we'll take that! We were all so impressed. You get a gold star for your hard work yesterday.
Because you did so well yesterday, the doctor suggested taking the tube out of your nose to see how you do. The trick is that you'll need to eat enough by mouth to gain weight before you can come home (and keep the nose tube out permanently). The doctor set a "12 hour minimum", meaning you need to eat 130 ml through your mouth in 12 hours and the tube would be removed. We don't gavage (give you food through your nose) during this period, and we don't necessarily stick to your specific eating times every three hours. We let you decide when you want to eat... whenever you wake up and give us cues that you are hungry, we'll feed you (either breastfeed or bottle feed or both, just as long as the feeding doesn't take longer than 30 minutes). Sure sounds like good practice for when you are home! You were so sleepy during the day today (for the entire 7 hours I was there!), but the nurse told me you perked up after I left, and you met your minimums! The day nurse was going to let the night-shift nurse decide if she was going to take your nose tube out or not. I guess I'll find out tomorrow what they decided to do! I can't wait to see your cute little face without a tube up your nose and taped to your cheek!
I also gave you another bath today... and this time I gave your bath all by myself! It's a little tricky holding your head up and washing your body all at the same time, but I did it! Again, it's good practice for when we come home because I'm sure daddy won't always be around to help at bath time. And each time I give you a bath, I notice that your hair seems to be getting lighter in color. It's turning to a pretty brown color. Daddy thinks you'll go blonde since that's what color his hair changed to when he was a baby. I guess we'll see!
After your bath, we got you dressed in some festive Christmas clothes! I think it was pretty appropriate since it's December and it was quite snowy this morning. I thought you looked pretty adorable. In fact, I couldn't keep my eyes off you :-)
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One last thing... I can't remember if I've told you this, but you have some really great nurses watching over you. It makes me feel good to know that you are in such good hands when I'm not able to be with you 100% of the time. When I got home tonight after visiting you, I made up these thank you gifts. I plan on giving them to your nurses when you finally get to come home. I can't thank them enough for what they've done for you and our family. Here's to hoping we'll be passing these out soon!
Love,
Mom
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