Four and counting!

Marlin is doing great.  The big news is he broke 4 pounds.  Matter of fact he is 4 pounds and 2 ounces!  Gus thinks he is a chunk.

He had his eyes tested last week and his retinas are fully mature with no damage.  This is a big concern with preemies, especially micro preemies (which Marlin was).  Their eyes can’t handle the oxygen that they receive through the ventilator because their veins are so tiny.  We just assumed he would have eye trouble as he grew older.  He still can have issues with his eyes, but this was still very good news that there is no damage as of now.

He has really been getting the hang of eating (captain obvious, he has been gaining weight).  The cool thing is that his doctor, Dr. Phillips is a big advocate of breast before bottle.  So they have been letting me breast-feed him as much as he wants.  The little bugger is a natural.  He has done better then Gus did at full term.  All the nurses and doctors are so impressed with the tenacity with which he breast feeds.  He has been able to eat almost three complete feeds from the breast.  This may not sound impressive, but it really is.  He still gets most of his feeds through his feeding tube, but as he gets stronger, he will breast feed more and more.

Now that he is over 1800 grams, they are starting to wean him from the isolette.  The biggest advantage of the isolette is that it helps keep his temperature for him.  But as he gets bigger he needs to be doing that on his own.  Yesterday they started by leaving his isolette top open for most of the day.  He did pretty well, but by 7 pm he was getting cold.  As nice as it will be to have him in a bassinette, we kind of like the isolette because the NICU is one noisy place.  He is more protected from all the noise (the cries, beeps and alarms that are always present).  We realize that he is going to have to get used that eventually.