Caleb Update: 12/6/07

Congratulations to Caleb! With his hard work of eating and sleeping (my kind of work) he has surpassed the 4lb milestone. He is now at 4lb 1oz.

He had another good nursing session today where he was able to get quite a bit of food. The nurse thinks he got about 1/3 of his normal feeding through nursing plus they still gave him his normal portion of 35cc's (up 2cc's from yesterday). He did have some residual left in his stomach, probably because he ate so much it takes longer than 3 hours to digest it so we're not too worried about it.

The whole process of finding the residual food in his stomach is pretty interesting. Because he has an NG tube and they put food directly into his stomach with a syringe, they can also take it back out. So every 3 hours when they come in to feed him again they pull out anything still left in his stomach from the previous feeding to make sure that he's digesting it and his gut is working correctly. If there is any residual they record it and then push it back down and also add the regular feeding. Usually there isn't any residual so we're not too concerned that there was some today. Adrienne, the nurse (Suzanne), and I were talking about how weird it must feel to have a full belly and then have it sucked back out and you suddenly feel hungry and then a few seconds later it is put back and you feel full again.

The temperature in his incubator, actually "isolet" is the proper medical term, remained the same at 29.8 degrees Celsius. He will slowly begin to be introduced to the world of clothing over the next week or so in order for him to acclimate to room temperature and get the feeling of something covering his body. Room temperature is 28 degrees C, so he's almost there (he started at 34C). It is encouraging to see that even though the temperature decreases he can still gain weight. Often preemies burn so many calories keeping their body temperature regulated that they have a hard time gaining weight. Not Caleb. Let's hope that he continues his overachieving ways throughout his whole life.

I got to hold him for an extended period of time today. Here are a couple pictures:


Even though he is doing so well and we love to see him, it is getting a bit fatiguing for us to go to the hospital every day and not be able to take him home. We just want to be home with him and begin a normal life as a family. Please pray for continued energy and a sense of hope and peace about the situation. Also pray that he continues to do well so can take him home as soon as possible.

Until tomorrow.


Ryanade