less oxygen, more bottle, please!

can't a man rest in peace? always a camera in my face!

resignation? or contentment? :)

At PT this past week we continued to work on rolling over – he comes close but still needs an extra push to get over the hump. This is progress! She is also helping him know how to sit up by rolling him up on his arm and is helping him along with crawling; right now he is doing some kind of backward scoot, pushing his legs as if to stand up, but his arms hadn’t quite gotten the message, which somehow propels him the opposite of the way he wants to go. Cristiane would let him push off her arm with his legs and then gently move his arms forward to clear the way. Whatever we’re practicing, he always amuses her with his antics. Last week he had her in stitches at his attempts at talking (clips below!), while this week he had her entertained with his endless energy. Taking a break isn't part of his lingo. Whenever Cristiane encourages it, he doubles his kicking speed.

Our pulmonologist says we can start to wean Calder off the Os by giving him periods of no oxygen. We have already been doing this at times during the day, mostly because it had become impossible to carry him around with a tank constantly. Thankfully, though, our tanks have dwindled in size and thus weight as we have discovered that mini tanks are an option (they sent some by accident once, thank goodness), so I do oftentimes place him in the Ergo and off we go. And by that I mean, off we go around the house for a short stint. We are going to start trialing him at night without the oxygen, too, and see how he’s satting. I’ve been watching him on our video monitor for the last several minutes tonight, and although he dipped as low as 93 for a brief second, I saw him as high as 99. He seems to be averaging about 96. It’s fun to see him without the cannula on his little face. Kraemer thinks it’s permanently deforming his nostril. Whether that’s true or not, we’re all anxious to say goodbye to the equipment.

At his appointments this week, Calder weighed in at 15 lbs 11 oz and measured 61 centimeters. Apparently, using his adjusted age on the regular chart, this puts him in the 48th percentile for weight but only the 5th percentile for length. Ginny called him a little Churchill. I’d told her that he has been regressing on his bottle volume, going from progressing from 1 oz to 2 oz to as much as 4 oz one time back to 1 or 2 oz, max. She agreed that it’s probably because, well, he isn’t hungry! We all want him to take the bottle, so she said to encourage him to do so, we’ll cut back his feeds a little bit (she also caveated that with, we’ll see what pulm says about this – they like them fat because they say they need those reserves to grow their lungs!) We currently feed him 150 oz at each feed, 6 times a day, prefacing one feed with a breastfeeding session (if he’s in the mood, and lately, not being hungry, he’s not), but now we’re going to feed him 150 oz only five times a day and make that sixth time solely breastfeeding. We hope this means he’ll be hungrier. If this works (as in, he seems to be taking to the bottle more) and he still meets his weight target in two to three weeks, we’ll drop another 150 oz feed and replace it with breastfeeding. If he doesn’t seem to like it, well, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. She told us that once he gets to the point where he takes everything orally for two months, we can have the G-tube removed. This target might be a little ways off but it’s sure nice to know what we’re shooting for!