Third Week of Life! (Days 18-21)

On Thursday Hugo's picc line was removed. It's a lot less frightening to pick him up now that it's out. All of his other leads either stick on or wrap around. Now he's getting all of his nutrition from the feeding tube. He tends to have a higher residual but, again, nothing is clinically wrong. Just likes to take his time digesting.

Although he likes to be bundled up tight, sleeping spread out doesn't seem to bother him as much as it used to. Just a week ago, having his arms and legs unbridled used to make him kind of fussy and uncomfortable. Now we find him peacefully resting like this all the time.

Hugo was approved for cue-based feeding this weekend. This means that he was showing signs he was ready to start trying to spend time at the breast or bottle. Phase 1 of this 4 phase process is taking breast or bottle once every 12 hour shift. Our first attempts were good for his age but only resulted in about 2-3 minutes of feeding. It will need to be 10-15 minutes for it to count as a full feeding.

It's a different mindset to have Hugo in the hospital. People go to the hospital when they are sick or injured. They go to the hospital to heal. Once they've healed they're released. That's not the case with Hugo. When people ask how Hugo is doing the answer has always been positive. He's doing great! They took out his IV, cleared him for some cue-based feeding, he hasn't had any spells, etc. When will he come home? Everyone seems a little taken aback by his homecoming estimate: October 16th. October 16th was his due date. That is the time he would have entered the world as a full term newborn. That is the estimated time he'll be able to thrive on his own. He's doing great but it's not about healing. It's about development. Development takes time. It can't be rushed. He's doing great but he has a long way to go.