Day 79 - Samuel Update

Wow, so a lot has happened with Samuel in the past week. He is completely weaned off of the cpap now!!! As of last Tuesday they trialed him off for 12 hours and he did great with that so they kept it off. This last friday they did have to put him back on for 8 hours or so because he had an eye exam and he didn't like it one bit. Supposedly he was screaming and going crazy. Poor guy. The eye doctor said that his eyes still look a little premature but they are developing and they look good from what she could tell so far. He'll have one more eye exam in a couple weeks. A couple hours after his eye exam he got his immunizations so he had a big day. He is now bottlefeeding 3 times within every 24 hour period and gets 55 mls at each feeding (so almost 2 oz every 3 hours). He needs the cannula while feeding because he's still trying to get the bottlefeeding down but he has been doing great with the suck/swallow/breathe thing. He's amazing. It usually takes him anywhere from 15-30 minutes to get the 2 oz down which is great. Before going home he needs to be bottlefeeding/nursing every 3 hours and be gaining weight at the same time. His heart looks good and the "ductus" looks significantly smaller which is great. As of today he weighs 6 lbs 1 oz which is a huge gain so they are going to be giving him some extra diaretics to help him out. A lot of that weight gain is water weight. Samuel is doing great and we are hoping that in the next 2-3 weeks he'll be home.

This last Saturday evening, my sister Leslie and I went to visit him. He had a mohawk goin' on. It was surprisingly really cute on him;)