thanks to his low hemoglobin levels and, well, the fact that he is a micropreemie who needs to spend all his energy growing, eric is spending much of his days acting a little listless and sleeping quite a bit. we received the results from his latest blood work and his hemoglobin level is now officially at the same point is was when they gave him his last series of transfusiona. when exactly he’ll get some more blood has become a great conversation topic, and it’s a sneaky way to get a sense for which nurses agree with the neonatologist’s course of action and which don’t. he’s holding out like a champ, although he’s “desatting” more and more, especially when he’s active, which makes feedings an endless series of alarms.

eric is continuing to add weight, thanks in no small part to the fortifier. to put things in perspective, he’s getting about 30 extra calories a day from his fortifier ( about 4 calories per ounce of milk are added ) and that small addition of calories is primarily responsible for his ounce-a-day weight gains. tonight he weighed in at 3 pounds 14.7 ounces or 1777 grams. if he keeps it up, i’ll be much more confident that we’ll be able to celebrate his hitting 4 pounds by his 10 week birthday on sunday.

while it might be boring for you, poor reader, we aren’t quite bored with the fact that eric is doing such a great job taking his bottles. he’s up to three bottle feeds a day, with the remainder being done via a tube that goes straight to his stomach.

when he’s tired, he’ll often feign like he’s not really interested in eating, but we know it’s all a big act and he inevitably drinks his entire bottle in 20 minutes or less. if all goes well, over the next week or so, we’ll be responsible for giving him all his feeds via a bottle, which will be quite exciting, indeed.

after much nagging from the nicu staff, kris and i selected a pediatrician today! we are notorious for taking months to decide on something as simple as a new toaster, so picking a pediatrician could have been something that threw us into months of “analysis paralysis”. that is, if we actually had months to make the decision. but we didn’t, as the nicu nurses have been making it increasingly clear that they needed to start making arrangements with our pediatrician, like, yesterday. so we created a “short list” by asking all the staff who they would take their kids to and correlating the answers with the list of peds doctors in our insurance plan. we then scheduled “meet and greet” appointments and asked a few pointed questions, which led to a surprisingly quick decision.