Zachary - Week Three

Tues Jan 12th – Mon Jan 18th

This has been a week of milestones for little Zachary! In order to come home, he has to be able to breathe on his own, maintain his temperature, and take all of his feedings by mouth without any disruptions to his breathing (aka suck, swallow, and breathe). Zachary has been breathing on his own since recovering from the infection, CHECK! This past week, the nurses steadily lowered the temperature of his incubator as he improved his temperature regulation. They think he should be ready for a crib in just a few more days!! So (almost) CHECK! Zachary has also started nursing! Well, really, he is practicing nursing. When he hit what would have been 34 weeks gestational age, we offered him the opportunity to nurse. He actually took to it very, very well! He rooted around and latched on immediately and started nursing. He didn’t seem to be drawing out much, but he never stopped breathing during the whole sucking phase! It was exhilarating to watch him hit a major milestone! The next night, we tried again but this time he fell asleep immediately. The next night also. On Monday, he stayed awake long enough to nurse for about 20 minutes. Is he getting any milk? It seems like yes, he is getting a little something. He is still too small to effectively nurse, but continuing to offer nursing while he is being gavage-fed is good practice for us. He’ll be bottle fed when I am not at the hospital, so it is important to get in nursing sessions even if he is not drawing out a lot of milk if I’d like to try to nursing at home for the majority of the time. The fact that he can already suck, swallow, and breathe is great! Now, he just has to get strong enough to do it for long enough to get a full feeding multiple times a day. He hasn’t spit up in the last three days, so we are excited that his tummy is beginning to tolerate the larger (48 ml / 4 hrs), higher calorie (supplemented with 4 cal / oz.) feeds.

On January 16^th, Zachary surpassed his birth weight! HOORAY! As of Monday night, he is at 1955 g, or 4 lb 5 oz., and he grew another half inch (currently measuring 18.5 inches). He is in the 25^th percentile for weight, and 75^th percentile for length.

Since he’s been doing a good job keeping his temperature up, we also hit two more milestones. Zachary can now come out of the incubator TWICE a day to be held! Also, we were able to bathe him on Sunday afternoon! His primary nurse Laurie had gotten a tub all set up before we arrived, and by tub I mean small dishpan! This is filled with bathwater and towels are put inside so he doesn’t slide. So that we both got a chance to participate, Todd held him while I scrubbed. He wasn’t thrilled by the bath, but tolerated it very well, never really crying very hard. When he was rinsed off, we wrapped him up like a mummy, got a new basin, and gave him a shampoo. He absolutely LOVED getting a shampoo!! And all I could think of as I wrapped a washcloth around his head was "Zachary's Spa Day"!

The final milestone for this week is that the caffeine supplementation was discontinued and he hasn’t had any apnea / bradycardia spells!