the eric update – day 66: more big feeds. more weight gain. a few alarms. getting ready for the baby shower.

day 66: sucking thumb

for the most part, today was a pleasantly quiet day. eric continued to guzzle his bottle feedings in near record setting time – he cleared away his 40 cc ( 4 more than his feed required ) evening bottle in 15 minutes! the nurses are continually amazed at how well he does with his feedings. currently, he only gets two bottle feedings a day, with the rest being done via a tube. if he keeps up the great work they will gradually increase the number of bottle feeds.

eric put on another ounce and weighed in at 3 pounds 13.2 ounces or 1735 grams. if he keeps gaining an ounce or so a day, he has a pretty good chance of hitting the four pound mark by his ten week birthday!

day 66: yet another bottle feed

they also decreased his nasal cannula again to 1.25 liters per minute. he’s started “desatting” ( decreased blood oxygen levels ) a bit more and had a few more “a’s” and “b’s” ( apneas and bradycardias ) around feeding time. this is probably due to the fact that his hemoglobin levels are getting low and has a diminished oxygen carrying capacity; after he gets another another transfusion, which we expect to happen in the coming days, everything should clear up quickly.

day 66: getting ready for the baby shower

i guess there’s no small amount irony in the fact that we haven’t finished getting our registry in order for our baby shower for a baby who is already two months old. our shower was originally going to be on july 31st, but we moved the date to september 19th to give us time to adjust to being in the nicu.

some might remember that there are good reasons why kris trots me out to babies ‘r us in the evening. we had a fun time picking out a bunch of cloths for eric; “grandma pam” accompanied us to the store and spent entirely too much money, but i suspect that grandmas like to do that sort of thing. thanks! grandma pam

Leave a Reply