...Hello Baby

This week marks Thomas's 37th week...which means that he has officially left his preemie days behind him. (Children born before 37 weeks are considered pre-term, even though a typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.) And to celebrate being a Baby, Thomas decided to ramp up his weight gaining to reach 5 pounds!!! In fact, attaining 5 pounds wasn't enough for our little fat man, last night he put on a nice 65 grams, which helped him surpass 5 pounds - and reach a little over 5 pounds 1 oz. To celebrate, we've included a few of our favorite "fat" pictures below. While Thomas is still below weight for a 37 weeker, his dietitian is pleased with TJC's current weight and fully expects him to catch up to a "normal" weight for his age. It is expected for Thomas to lose a little bit of weight while bottle feeding, but so far, he's done nothing but gain.

And speaking of...Thomas is continuing his bottle feeding - and yesterday he took all eight feeds (Thomas is on an eating every three hour schedule) by bottle. He was a little sleepy with his 9 am bottle with TJC mom this morning....but it's to be expected that he gets a little worn out for the first few days of trying 8 bottles a day. You can see in one or two of the pictures below that Thomas's feeding tube was removed. It's nice to see Thomas's face with one more piece of equipment gone!!

We've also included a few pictures of Thomas in his bouncy seat. We're starting to pay close attention to placing Thomas in different positions for exercise and range of motion. He seemed to have liked his first try in the seat as (you can see from the pics) he slept through the experience. Actually, Thomas seems to be sleeping quite well between his feeds lately. Makes TJC mom and dad VERY happy to be seeing that. As excited as we are to get him home, it won't be too long before we join the ranks of sleep deprived moms and dads everywhere....so we appreciate all of Thomas's efforts to get us some sleep wherever possible down the road....

The next few days and weeks will involve mostly a weening off of Thomas's remaining support - both respiratory support and medication. He is presently on 4 liters of flow w/ 25 - 28% of oxygen (we raised his flow last week because he was not yet ready to be at 3 liters) and taking aldactazide (a diuretic), caffeine and iron. Thomas will go home on iron, but his doctors would like to ween him off the caffeine and diuretic before he leaves - so we'll see what our little man feels up to doing.

We'll try to keep you posted on a more daily basis going forward....while Thomas is continuing to do amazing things, he can always use a bit more positive energy. And TJC mom and dad are, as always, extremely proud of our little guy.

Thanks for sharing - we'll be back soon!
-TJC mom and dad