October 26, 2008: Day 56 (CORRECTION: Only 7 days left in the NICU?)

Aidan continues to do very, very well. We think the days of the feeding tube are over. He is getting stronger and stronger with his feedings, and shows lots of energy when he gets hungry. He is up to 38cc of milk every 3 hours. They weaned him another 0.5 liters/minute on the high-flow cannula again today. He is now down to 1.5 liters/minute. Aidan didn't show any signs that the oxygen flow had been turned down, so we are expecting Dr Kaempf to turn this down to 1 l/m tomorrow. The lower the flow is set, the less Aidan is being helped by the pressure keeping his lungs open, and the more he is doing all the work himself. At 1 liter/minute, the oxygen flow is low enough that they could switch Aidan to a low-flow oxygen cannula, which is the type of apparatus that we will be taking home with him. This means that Aidan just needs to demonstrate that he can be stable on the low-flow cannula, and not have any heart or apnea spells for 7 days.

I fed Aidan at 5pm:





Tonight we did get Nurse Lee again. We arrived back at the NICU at 9pm to a peacefully sleeping Aidan:



See the bumpers on the sides of his head. Lee is trying to keep Aidan on the back of his head to help make it more round. A couple weeks ago I talked about how premature babies tend to get mis-shaped heads. Aidan's head is pretty round though, and is much better than many NICU babies' heads.

With great anticipation for the big 5 pound milestone, and with plenty of fanfare, speeches, and music prepared for afterwards, we held the ceremonial weighing. Aidan needs only 20 grams (2248 --> 2268) to reach the magical 5 pound mark. A drumroll please...



DOH! 4 lbs, 15.8 oz (2265 grams)

We had to send the marching band home.

Begin digression.

The NICU has 2 different types of scales. One is the normal scale like the one pictured above. These scales always report weights rounded (or truncated, don't know which) to multiples of 5 grams.

The other type of scale is the breast-feeding scale. A breast-feeding scale was used 2 days ago:



Breast-feeding scales report weights to the nearest gram, so I think they are more accurate. So any weight that I have reported that is *not* on a multiple of 5 grams comes from a breast-feeding scale. Lately, we have been using the breast-feeding scale for all Aidan's weighings because there is one permanently parked in our area since Denyse needs it to weigh Aidan before and after breast-feeding to see how much he eats.

Tonight, Lee was going to use the breast-feeding scale to weight Aidan, but since it's Sunday, he used the regular scale because it is much easier to measure Aidan's length on the bigger regular scale.

So what does this all mean and why am I spending so much time boring you with these details? Aidan was only 3 grams short of 5 pounds. It's possible that Aidan *did* reach 5 pounds today (2268 grams), but since we changed scales, his weight might have been rounded down to 2265 grams.

End digression.

Aidan's measurements for this week:

- Length: 42.25 cm (16 5/8 inches)
- Head: 31 cm (12 1/4 inches)

So, in the last 7 days, Aidan has:

- Gained 220 grams (7.8 ounces)
- Grown 0.5 cm longer (about 1/5 inch)
- Got a bigger head by 0.75 cm (1/3 of an inch)

After the weighing at 11pm, we again fed Aidan. He hadn't pooped in 18 hours, so he was starting to feel unconformable. So Denyse rubbed his tummy:



Working for the evasive burp.



Note the "What are you doing to me?" look in Aidan's eyes...

All done eating:



Tune in tomorrow for the 5 pound ceremony...