Caleb Update: 12/25/07

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas celebration, we certainly did. Even though it was hard to leave Caleb, I think it was good for us to get out of the hospital and visit our families this weekend. We had a great time up in Bellingham on Sunday with my family and we were so excited to be able to go to my Grandma and Grandpa Hallberg's 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Congratulations again! We also had a wonderful Christmas Eve night and Morning with the Pottorfs. It was nice to have some semblance of the joy of the Christmas season considering the events in the last month. We are so blessed to have such a loving and supportive family!

Caleb is doing so well. He is still gaining weight like crazy. He is 5lb 8oz!! He has averaged 2oz of gain over the past 4 days. He hasn't even resumed eating yet. The doctor said that we are going to finish the 10-day antibiotic treatment on Friday and then begin to introduce food back into his diet that same day. They will start out slow to acclimate his body to food again and then increase the amount as he can handle it. As the food amount increases they will decrease the IV amount until it is no longer needed, just as before. We don't think it will take long for him to get to that point as he seems to still have a strong desire for food and sucking.

Caleb is getting so big and stays awake for longer periods of time, which we hope will help his feedings as well. He always used to fall asleep when we try to bottle or breast feed him. It is so awesome to make eye contact with him and see that he recognizes, to some degree, who we are. It also makes it hard to leave at night because he seems to be wide awake when we try to put him back in his incubator. We hate to leave him when he is awake because we don't want to miss out on that interaction time or have him feel like we're abandoning him.

We hope that he continues to have success gaining weight and picks up feeding again so we can resume talk of taking him home, but I know that we still have some hurdles to overcome before that happens.

Thanks for your continued prayer support.

Ryan