4 Pounds!

Jacob crossed the 4 lb milestone last night and is now 4 lbs, 2 oz!  At this weight he is big enough for an open crib but his doctors want to hold off until he is more stable and on a lower oxygen flow.  When he goes to a full crib, he will wear clothes and be wrapped up in blankets to stay warm (in the incubator he wears just a diaper).  When he has apnea spells they need to be able to look at his chest and see if he is breathing, which is difficult to do if he is bundled up in so many layers, so the open crib will wait....

He also continues to make slow and steady improvements on oxygen.  He is having very few apnea spells, mostly on Sunday night for some reason, but has been fine since.  So his doctor lowered his oxygen flow from 5.0 to 4.0 liters per minute.  He will be ready for an open crib when he gets to about 1.0.

More great news is that we are getting to hold him on a regular basis now!! We think the rule is once per day, but we're still trying to figure out the protocol.  I held him on Saturday and today, Tyson held him on Sunday and Monday.  We are getting to hold him for up to 20 minutes and can feed him through his feeding tube while we hold him (a step toward bottle feeding).  It is so wonderful to be able to hold him rather than only look at him through the plastic wall.


We think bottle feeding will be coming soon, but don't want to rush him.  It could be coming up in the next few days or within a week, but he has to adjust to lower oxygen flow, and will be having his 2 month vaccinations over the next 2-3 days so we don't want to push him until he is ready.


Pictures from today: