in my continuing efforts to provide evidence that i am not one to shirk my fatherly duties, i’m happy to present photographic evidence that i am capable of feeding my son without drowning him or otherwise causing any grievous bodily harm. woohoo! perhaps due to my superior bottle feeding skills, he managed to make small work of the whopping 29 ounce cc ( d’oh! there’s a big difference between ounces and cc’s! ) feeding in about 12 minutes, with nary a burp or sign of reflux!

he’s looking right at the camera and it’s fun to imagine that he might be waving to his fans all over the world.

we’re in much more cramped quarters these days since the move to the isolette and it’s rude to turn the overhead lights on when a baby might be sleeping just a few feet away. so kris, relents and decides to use the evil flash.

i like this picture because it shows that even though he’s getting big, he’s still quite small and it’s easy to hold him in one hand while i feed him with the other.

eric has been getting fed every two hours, but today they decided that it was time to move to three hour feeds, as he’s been doing so well eating over the past few days.

when micropreemies are very small their stomachs can’t handle very much milk during feedings, so they feed them less milk more often. but as they get bigger, they can feed them larger volumes less frequently; so it’s a great sign that he’s transitioning into three hour feeds, and it’s yet another little, tiny step towards getting out of the nicu.

in another bit of progress, micropreemie style, eric’s had his isolette temperature turned down from 30 degrees C to 29.3 degrees C which means he’s rapidly getting even better at holding keeping his body temrerature stable all by himself. when the isolette tempterature reaches room temperature ( about 26 degrees C ) and he approaches 1800 grams, then he’ll probably be ready to move to an open bed. tonight, eric gained an ounce and weighed in at 3 pounds 11.1 ounces or about 1675 grams, so it’s possible that he could hit the 1800 gram mark before the end of the week.