after staying not gaining weight for almost a week after coming off the vent, eric seems to have started adding on a modest amount of weight each day, which is great. tonight’s weight-in put him at 1535 grams or 3 pounds 6.1 ounces and he’s on 14 cc’s of breastmilk every hours. last night they started to double his daily increases in breastmilk from 1 cc to two cc’s, by adding a cc in the morning and, if he tolerates the increase, they’ll add a second cc in the evening. so, late this evening, he’ll get another increase to 15 cc’s. since he only needs to be on about 20 cc’s every two hours to be considered to be on “full feeds”, i think it shouldn’t be too long before he’s off the intravenous drip entirely, which is great news since the IV line is a great entry point for all manner of infectious agents that we’d like to keep far, far away from eric.

and there’s good news regarding eric’s direct hyperbillirubemia; the sonogram of eric’s liver came back negative for any serious structural defects or major blockages and the first round of liver function tests also came back negative. this means that most of the really bad things that could be causing the condition can be safely ruled out ( well, really only about as ruled out as you can rule out something with a negative result on a micropreemie. remember, the small sample sizes can sometimes give you false negatives. ). given the lack of positive results ( in this case, positive is actually a negative ), the prevailing educated guess is that the condition is “merely” due to changes that occur when you switch back and forth between intravenous feeds and breastmilk, and it should resolve itself after eric goes back on full feeds, which will hopefully be very soon.

today, our neighbor who has 2-year-old triplets who were born preterm, gave us a “preemie calendar” which has a sheet of stickers that you’re supposed to put on the days on which certain milestones are reached.

kris and i laughed at some of the ones that we’re still anxously awaiting, such as “Moves to Isolette!”, “Saw Your Face Without Tape on It!” and “Off Oxygen!” ( you’ll probably have to view the large sized image to actually be able to read the stickers ). i’m not sure how i would have reacted two and half months ago had anyone told me that i’d be patiently awaiting for the day i’d see my son’s face without a single bit of tape. but, i guess you’ve got to celebrate the milestone’s you have, not the ones you thought you were going to have. or something like that.

in case you were wondering, the postcards are still coming in! i know i’m probably redundantly repeating myself, but i really, truly am appreciate of every single postcard and i can’t wait until eric is old enough to understand what it all means.