Caleb Update: 12/11/07

Happy two week birthday, Caleb! Wow, two weeks has just flown by. A lot of exciting stuff has happened in the last couple days. Let me fill you in.

First, Caleb is gaining weight like there's no tomorrow. The last post I told you that he has surpassed the 4lb milestone to 4lb 1 oz, well as of yesterday 12/10 he is 4lb 8oz! He gained almost a half pound in the last 4 days! He continues to eat and is now getting 40cc's (1.3 oz) at every feeding. On Sunday morning the nurse told us that he took his whole feeding with a bottle which is a great sign. As I said before, one of the check-offs to go home is for Caleb to be able to feed orally, whether by breast or bottle, and gain weight. He seems to be making great progress with both methods, and it appears that he has the gaining weight thing down too.

Our good friends Ken, Carol, Dana and Jon came to visit on Saturday. It was great to see them and catch up. Because Dana was still recovering from a cold and Carol is perpetually exposed to a variety of domestic and exotic bugs being librarian at a school, they weren't allowed to see Caleb in person. So the masked men, Ken and Jon, were the only ones that got to see the live version of Caleb. Through the wonderful advances in technology, Carol and Dana were able to see Caleb via a multi-media presentation complete with pictures and video. It's not quite as good as the real thing, but it sufficed in a pinch.

We were nervous when we walked in his room on Sunday because it looked like he wasn't there. We were scared at first because we thought that something had happend to him and they had to rush him off somewhere. We were pleasantly surprised to see that his incubator was replaced with an open-air bassinet, that is much smaller than his incubator, which was the reason we didn't see it at first. This means that we can pick him up and hold him pretty much anytime that we want. Yeah for Mom and Dad! This is yet another major milestone that he's making great progress on! He is now wearing some PJ's that he seems to get lost in, but at his rate of growth he'll fit into them quickly.

We had a wonderful visit with my mom and Grandma Hallberg on Sunday. It was so good to see them and have them get some face time with Caleb. I hope soon that we will be allowed to have others hold him as I'm sure that the grandparents are chomping at the bit. As the nurse pointed out we had 4 generations of my family in that room, which was really cool to be able to do. Caleb really put on a show for Mom and Grandma because he was awake and wide-eyed, looking all around, so they got to have some fun interaction time with him.
Mom had brought some of my baby pictures down to compare to Caleb. It was a little eerie to see how much we looked a like, even at 2 weeks. I remember when I was a kid and comparing my pictures to my dad's and seeing how much we looked alike; it's a little strange to now be on the dad side of that equation.

As you can tell our little boy is growing fast and we have guarded optimism that he will continue to do so and we can have him home by Christmas, but we also don't want to get our hopes up either. That is something you all can help us pray for.

Ryan