Cautiously optimistic

Since Monday Sutton has been making slow and steady strides towards coming home with us. What a great way for us to celebrate his 2 weeks here! Tuesday, July 9th was his due date and he spent the day weaning down his CPAP settings. Then yesterday he got rid of the CPAP altogether! Bye bye!!

Sutton is currently getting oxygen at 3 lpm and his vital signs have remained stable with each change. His hoarseness is progressively getting better. He still sounds like a dinosaur with a sore throat when he cries, but is relatively quiet now when he sleeps or is just hanging out. 

He is having a follow up bronch today to ensure the area of exposed cartilage is healing. After that his oxygen will continue to be weaned down and he will resume his feeds. 

This poor kid can't seem to gain weight because at every turn he needs to be NPO (nothing by mouth) for some test or procedure. His feeds were increased yesterday to just shy of 3 ounces every 3 hours and he takes it like a champ. The plan (and my hope) is that he can start breastfeeding in the next few days, once his oxygen is gone. It is possible that breastfeeding could utilize too much energy - in which case he would go to bottle feeding and the breast milk would be fortified to help him gain weight. This is not my ideal, but it's certainly small in comparison to some of the other possibilities we have come up against. 

He has been so much more like a "normal" baby these last few days...what I remember Cohen being like. We are so thrilled that things have continued trending in this direction and we are cautiously optimistic that his health status will continue improving. The next few years will probably have a lot of ups and downs, but we feel so fortunate to have gotten through the past 2 weeks to the place we are at now. 

* We will certainly have some bad habits to break from his stay in the NICU: he loves his makeshift wubbanub, sleeping with his monkey on his head and being held all the time! *