Birth Weight

Just a short update to brag about JD’s awesome feedings and his stellar weight gain

Feedings

James continues to dominate his feedings by mouth. We practice at least once a day and for the most part he is always a willing participant. I think he knows we hold off his feeds (through the OG tube) until we can get a few good tries with the bottle nipple. At least he humors us for a bit. He can now take anywhere between 2–4mls by mouth which is AMAZING! Everyone is super impressed, obviously.

Weight

Chubby! As of Friday morning he had officially passed his BIRTH WEIGHT (well, the estimated, agreed upon, kinda random birth weight). JD now weighs in at ­­­­3lbs 6.7oz. He should be gaining about 20–30 grams/day but to us any gain is good. They have upped his feeds to 30ml eight (8) times a day and he has had no problems. Each time the nurses feed him they check his belly for residuals (left over milk) and he never has any remaining. Seems as though he is a foodie and savors each ml of milk. Definitely takes after mom and dad with his love of food.

As we approach the 4-week mark at Children’s Memorial we will experience rotations. What does that mean for us? Our favorite doctor will be moving on to something new and we will get a whole new group of docs. This does not sit well with us as we are making such great progress we don’t want someone new coming in shaking things up.  We figure Dr. O will tell the new doctors “JD is remarkable and his parents are super low maintenance.” And by low maintenance he means we are here everyday and have a notebook of questions during rounds. Dr. O has reassured us he will “be around” and will continue to check in on our little man. I told Dr. O he would one day brag about how the famous Special Olympian, James Gawel, was once his patient.

This leads me to my conversation with Dr. O regarding JD’s timeline. As we have mentioned in the past we are not trying to rush anything, as we want to ensure JD is ready to come home. Our first step is to get him “out of the box” and into an open-air crib. He needs to be up to 1800 grams (just under 4lbs) meaning if we can average about 20 grams/day it will take just over 12 days to reach our goal weight. Then once he is in the open-air crib we will figure out our feeding options moving forward. Nate and I are in agreement with Dr. O on this timeframe, and we expect the new docs will stay on the same course.

As with each of our steps, Nate and I have our own goals to reach regardless of the doctors. We want JD home before the hospital move on June 9^th. Our goal is to get him home by the end of May. I have made our goal very clear to the doctors and my authority is pretty  . . . worthless around here. However, they said we would work towards that goal which is good enough for us at this time.

This morning (Saturday) we got the call we were expecting . . . JD got bumped from our large, bright, city view Penthouse suite with only four quiet babies to the small, dark, economy suite with six loud babies. JD is use to only the finest things in life so this is an adjustment for him (and mom & dad). Unlike the real world, those who need it most stay in the Penthouse suite as that room is for the sickest babies so a move to a new room means JD no longer needs the services of that room (he out grew those services during week 2 but they liked him in that room so he was able to extend his stay). Plus, there was a new family in our old room that had just moved in with a bit more drama than JD would like. Overall this move is a good thing.

We plan to spend the weekend swimming with Connor and snuggling with JD.

Side note: In my previous post I missed spelled cleft palate, which is now updated. Also, it was brought to my attention that I often misspell words or make grammatical errors. Please know I find grammar issues super annoying so I apologize. I will not make excuses such as “I usually post late at night when I am tired” or “I read the post so many times the errors disappear the more I look through the post.” Instead of excuses I will promise to try harder and make your reading experience more pleasanter (hehehe - I am hilarious).

Beautiful Blue Eyes

Milk drunk

Ummm guys, I think this "upgraded" collar might be a tad bit too big

While the collar was being fixed we got some comfy neck time

Wiggly and loving it

Saturday night in is totally worth it