We had another good day. Relatively uneventful in itself, though we are on the cusp of some pretty big milestones and I had some good conversations with the nurse about our plan of attack.
As far as today goes, the biggest news of the day is that they turned his oxygen flow down to 2 liters. So far he’s handling the change very well and doesn’t seem to even notice the difference. His weight was up another 11 grams this evening, bringing him to 3 lbs 13 oz. In just two weeks he has put on a full pound, which is fantastic.
As for the big stuff on the horizon … we learned today that in about another week he could both be in a crib, and be breastfeeding. We knew these were possibly coming soon, but today we got some more specifics on how the transition for each works.
For the crib, the first criterion is size. It usually happens around 1800-2000 grams, but 1600 grams is the minimum weight. He’s currently 1728 grams. The second and more important factor is temperature. Currently his isolette is set at 27º Celsius (80.6º Fahrenheit) and it needs to be able to maintain his body temperature for 24 hours at 23-25º C (73.4-77º F). They’ve already started dropping the temperature on his isolette a little each day, so as long as he keeps handling the change without a drop in body temperature, they think he’s on track to be in a crib in about a week. This is particularly exciting because then we can put clothes on him and can pick him up whenever we want, instead of having to schedule one long hold each day.
For breastfeeding, sometime around week 33 or 34 (he’ll be 33 weeks on Monday), they’ll start scoring him on a scale of 1-4 every time they come in for cares. 1 means he’s awake and showing strong hunger cues like sucking on his hands or rooting. 2 means he wakes up when he’s handled and shows some hunger cues. 3 means he’s briefly alert with cares but shows no hunger cues, and 4 means he sleeps through cares with no hunger cues. If he goes 24 hours with all 1s and 2s then they start the “72 hour breastfeed” which is like breastfeeding bootcamp. During this time they want me around as much as possible so I can nurse him whenever he’s hungry. After those 72 hours they are fine mixing breast and bottle, but those first 72 hours are critical to breastfeeding success. Since it will take a while before he’s eating efficiently they will weigh him before and after each feed, subtract the amount he’s taken in via nursing and make up the difference with the tube. Once he’s getting 80% of his feeds via breast or bottle, they will remove his feeding tube. It can be a long process and we’ve been told this could very well be one of the things that keeps us here until close to his original due date as he learns to work for his food.
So that’s the plan. I love me a good plan.
Keeping up with the Hoffmans 