39w

Our pediatrician called this morning. She's been so positive the last few days.

I love when she calls and says "he looked SO GREAT this morning!" She often calls me early in the morning (this morning around 7:30) so it's a wonderful way to start the day.

Today it was even better. She said she thinks he'll be home in 5-7 days. She doesn't think he's going to need to come home on oxygen. He'll definitely come home on a monitor.

The monitor is almost mandatory based on his gestational age at birth. And it's perfectly fine by me. Maybe I'll be able to sleep once in a while instead of staring at him to make sure he's still breathing.

We have Dr. C this so it makes the day even brighter. (He threatened to find my blog and read it today, so umm.. well.. uh.. Hi, Dr. C.) He asked me this morning if I thought he needed anything changed today. This was after yesterday asking ME if Robbie was going to go home on oxygen.

What a difference a week can make. Last week I have the doctor who acts like I'm a nutcase for asking questions about a surgery and this week we have the doctor who asks my opinion. I love feeling like part of the team.

In any case, today I brought our carseat to the hospital. For now it looks like the plan is to wait until Monday for the car seat test (he has to be able to sit in the car seat w/o dropping his saturations for the length of time it would take us to get home- so about 45 minutes.)Robbie's physical therapist is going to fit him into the seat and teach me the whole thing and will also install the base and such. She'll be back on Monday so we'll do everything then.

Dr. C wants to leave Robbie on the oxygen he's on (1/16 liter) for another day or so and then try him off of oxygen completely.

Robbie's eating like a champ. He went about a day and a half w/o having to be tube fed at all.

Yesterday his G Tube was leaking milk (a LOT of milk) and the surgeon had to come adjust the balloon in it. Robbie was STARVING and hysterical in the meantime. So at one point we moved him to 2 hour feedings just trying to satisfy him a little more. Well, after his tube got fixed and we gave him some gas drops (in a desperate attempt to please him) he slept HARD for a while and didn't want to wake up after 2 hours to eat, so we tubed that one. But we then moved him back to 3 hour feedings and he's done great since then.

He wouldn't nurse last night at all. I think he was just too hysterical for food and the boobs are slower than a bottle. But we're going to give it another shot today. Wish us luck.

And go ahead and sacrifice another moose or two. He did manage to gain 5 grams last night but that's not nearly enough. The one thing that might hang us up at the hospital is if he won't gain weight steadily, so get the moose fires burning.

--Trish