over the river and through the woods

Holy moly, where did May go? I’ve been trying to get all caught up on blog entries from March and April and in the meantime, May flew right by.

Calder is making awesome progress on the G-tube weaning. I can say that now, a month after we started getting really aggressive about it, but really up until now it felt to me like it was slow-going. All the doctors have been so laudatory about his development that I suppose I just had very high expectations, thinking that as soon as we let him dictate the amounts by bottle and the schedule entirely that he would dump the tube within days. Of course, that’s crazy talk, and we have made a considerable number of adjustments since we started. At first, I swayed heavily toward his preferences, hardly tubing him at all, and trying to skip the 6am feed, as the doctors suggested. But nowadays, we are waking up at 6am even though we know he can either a) sleep right through it or b) fall back asleep very easily with a tiny bit of help because we have found that 6am is when the man really likes to chow down. When you’re trying to wean, there’s no sense in missing such a great opportunity. If he doesn’t eat well at 9am (say, at least 2.5 oz) we tube the other 1.5 – we’ve learned that getting off to a strong start seems to set the tone for the rest of the day. (Hey, sorta like they tell you to eat breakfast, right?) His eating has become much more predictable, although we still have our days where we have to tube him three or so times. But we’re getting there.

The Many Faces of Calder

The oxygen is still technically around, too, but at this point we have been instructed to just test him with the pulse oximeter several times a day and/or a few nights a week, and if he continues to sat fine, discontinue the oxygen, too.

i got this

Cristiane says he is doing much better with sitting. Still not sitting unsupported because there is always something more interesting behind him that he has to bend backward to see. At this stage he should no longer be using that reflex, the whole arching his back business, we’re told, but we do see it less and less. We catch him in his crib all the time now up on his knees, sticking his little bum up in the air.