Jack is up to 3 lbs, 11 oz now- he's almost gained 2 lbs since he was born. He looks great- definitely filling out. Some exciting news from last week- Jack can wear clothes now! They had to wait until he could regulate his temperature and he's finally one step down for temperature monitoring, so that is great. My laundry loads have definitely increased, he goes through a few outfits a day! He's taking 32 ml's of breast milk per feed, 8 times a day, so he's doing great there as well.
We had a good conversation with the doctor on Saturday about when Jack will be able to go home. We have three goals right now- 1. he needs to be off oxygen 2. after he's off oxygen, he'll need to be taking 8 bottles of breast milk a day 3. no A's and B's for 7 days (Apnea and Bradycardia, where he stops breathing). Jack has done well with the A's and B's- had a few on the 17th, but hasn't had them regularly since Nov 9th, so that is great. So- our biggest obstacle right now is oxygen. He's still on NIPPV and his next step is CPAP. We are praying that he's able to get off of all oxygen as soon as possible so that he can move to Level II and start bottle feeding. They gave him a blood transfusion on Thanksgiving to increase his red blood cells and hopefully help his lungs mature a bit. It hasn't shown noticeable differences yet. They started him on a diuretic on Saturday to release any fluids from his lungs to help his breathing. They are really doing everything possible to help his little lungs mature and be able to work properly without assistance.
Please pray specifically for lung development if you can. We would love love love for him to be home by Christmas, but we have a few obstacles to get through before that can happen. So, we really don't have a good idea of when he'll be home- will just have to take it all day by day.
Below are some pics from the last week:
holding Daddy's wedding ring
Passed out with Daddy's hand on his belly
In his new preemie outfit from Aunt Erin
Thumbs up for Matt's grandad, who had surgery last Friday