2 Weeks Old Today!!!

The Ups: Noah has been very good at learning how to suck his dummy, he has been on full feeds for his size for 24 hrs and this morning his central line came out!!! His temperature is perfect, his blood pressure is fine and his oxygen saturations are really good and he is up to 6 hours off his CPAP now without a worry! 
                                                                                             

The Downs: Last night he was weighed as he is every 2 days. He lost 30 grams so he is back to 700 grams. The doctors and nurses have been asked every question under the sun about why, is this bad, what happened, is he getting sick, etc etc and the stock answer is no. It just happens sometimes. He obviously burned more calories than he ate, even though he is on full feeds. Sometimes the body burns calories developing the organs. There is alot going on in his little body at the moment. His brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver etc are all still maturing and that takes energy. So at least that is some consolation. He is developing on the inside! Still we were pretty devastated.                                                                                                                           

The lesson here is to be grateful it isn't anything more serious than a little bit of weight loss. He uses more energy the more time he is off CPAP, but he needs to be weaned from it. Catch 22 situation. He uses more energy having Kangaroo Cuddles, but he needs them to bond to us and there are a load of studies that prove that they do better developmentally if they have them. He uses more energy each time they up his feeds to digest the milk, but he needs to be fed to put on weight. I just think he is at a cross road and this was the changeover from having IV Feeds as well as his milk, to just having milk alone. The good news is that they are going to add a fortifier to his milk which adds calories to his feeds without adding volume. So chubby chub chub, here we come!!!