Slow n Steady

Hello, friends of Lil Duggie. Sorry we've been a bit remiss this week in our updates ... things have been pretty hectic for us, and pretty happily uneventful for Douglas. He's up to 5 pounds 9 oz today, after a couple of days at hangin in at 5, 7. He's also taking 6 of his 8 daily feedings by bottle, and breastfeeding for 15 mins twice a day ahead of a bottle feeding.

All this progress had us getting a bit nervous and excited that he might get up to all 8 feedings by bottle with no apnea and that we might be looking at bringing him home as soon as next weekend. However, he's had an apnea spell each of the last 2 days, which isn't a big deal, but tells us that the 6 feedings a day by bottle are wearing him out, and that the last of the caffeine they were giving him before is almost totally out of his system now. For all us addicts out there, we know that can be pretty hard by itself.

We'll talk to his 'real doctor' tomorrow, but for now we're feeling like it'll be probably 2 more weeks at least before our little guy is headed for home. He'll be 36 weeks of gestation age tomorrow, so we have to keep remembering that he was still meant to be "cooking" for another month almost. The twice a day visits are starting to wear his mother down a bit (we live 25 minutes from the hospital) but we are of course very happy that this is the extent of our problems with our boy right now... many NICU parents aren't nearly as lucky.

While we are waiting, we had our last big silly house party this weekend since that sort of thing will be out for awhile once he comes home, and it was a very nice break in the routine. We're also getting the house and Doug's room ready for his arrival ... our 'nesting' period was a bit thrown off kilter by his dramatic entry into our lives.

Thanks for reading, and we'll try to post more regularly for the home stretch. In the meantime, here's a cute little vid that mommy snuck yesterday before the camera died.