Slideshow - Levi is 10 weeks!

Levi is 10 weeks old!

Levi is now ten weeks old! Gestationally, this puts him at 34 weeks. He now weighs 4 lbs and 8.3 ounces. This past Thursday, he took his first bottle. I called the hospital at 4:00 pm to check on him and his nurse informed me that he would be taking his first bottle at 5:00. My mom got to our house with groceries at 4:30 and I told her that I wanted to get up there to see if I could feed him so off I raced and made it just in time. He did so well with it that they decided to increase him to two bottles the following day. This feeding was a little harder for him. He was sucking so hard on the bottle that he forgot to breathe and they had to increase his oxygen a little. For now they are still doing two bottles a day until both feedings are easy for him. Before he is discharged from the hospital, he must be taking all eight feedings perfectly. This past week he has experienced quite a few changes. They moved him out of his isollette into a bassinet. There are lots of babies in the NICU right now (lots of families who would appreciate your prayers as well). They also switched him to the unheated nasal canula. This is a good thing since it is one more step closer to room air; however, it is not as comfortable for him. In addition, they took away his daily dose of caffiene. His Nana and Papa were able to come from AZ to visit with all of us for a week. They had to return home on the 4th. Levi was very sad to see them go (as were the rest of us). As a result of all of these changes, he had to be bumped back up to two liters on his nasal canula and had even gotten up to 50% on his oxygen. They did an X-ray and a CBC to check for any infections to see what was going on. They both came back fine so they decided to change out his tubing on his nasal canula and immediately he went back down to 30%. The nurse thought that the connection must not have been very good on the tubing. Needless to say, we were relieved to see that that was all he needed. When we arrived to see him last night, we saw that he had just had a bath and was nice and clean. His hair was so soft and stuck straight out in some places. He was really working hard to get his milk out of his bottle for us but when we turned it upright we saw that he wasn't really getting much out of it. The nurse tried a different flow on the bottle nipple. He started high satting (he liked it better) but was still only able to get 13 cc of the 36 that we were feeding him. After 30 minutes of sucking it really burns up all the calories that he received from the feeding so we decided to let him rest after 15 minutes of eating and give the remainder to him via his tube using gravity. Levi is so adorable. He has the best sense of humor and is so well behaved for the nurses. Continue to pray for him to grow out of his "desatting" and that his feedings increase as they are supposed to so that he can come home soon.