Updates: January 8th - 6 days old

Overall, Mario had a good day again today. His feeds have been increased to 33mL/feed (every 3 hours). They also started fortifying the breastmilk and are adding 22 calories to it each time along with vitamins and such. That will help him put on weight so he can maintain his body temperature and gain more stamina.

He continues to have his spells where his heart rate and oxygen saturation levels drop. For the most part, he recovers them on his own. But, he has needed a little extra stimulation for a few of these spells today. Twice they actually had to put the little mask on his face for a minute or so just to get him to take a few deep breaths. He usually brings his heart rate back without problems, but just doesn't recover his breathing completely. The nurses assured us that this is typical for preemies and he'll grow out of it as he matures and gets stronger. The only time they would be concerned is if he has the spells where he needs assistance more and more frequently (several times per shift) and then they would check for things like respiratory infection. We are no where near that point at this time. We are also starting to see a pattern with these spells. They have been happening either towards the end of a feed or after one. For about 45-60 minutes after he eats he seems to be prone to a few of these spells. So, we think they are related more to reflux than to true apnea. They are going to try using a feeding pump tonight to see if giving him his feeds slowly (over 30-60 minutes) at a constant rate helps reduce this. We had been just using the gravity feed method and that may just been putting too much in his little stomach too quickly causing things to back up a bit.

His bilirubin levels are declining now. It was down to 10.8 this morning and it seems like he followed normal pattern of peaking and now they are dropping. They won't be checked again unless he looks very jaundiced or shows any other reason for concern. He still looks like a little pumpkin, but we all agreed that he doesn't look as much like one as he did yesterday.

This afternoon Dom and I both spent time holding him all swaddled up. Dom went back to work today, but met me at the hospital over his lunch break to spend some time with us. Grandma Tina and Great Grandma Scipione also spent time at the hospital with us before they headed back to Salem.

Tonight, Dom got to participate in his care while I was pumping. He took his temperature, changed his diaper (Mario gave him a poopy one too), undressed him, took him out to weigh him, etc. And, of course, he did an awesome job.

Mario is gaining weight nicely now. His weight was up 35 grams this evening, putting him at 3lbs, 15 oz. That's above his birthweight! Of course, the nurse did warn us that there could be variation in the scales, so not to be alarmed if it changes a little tomorrow (i.e., if he were to lose a little bit). And, right after weighing him he filled his diaper again, so some of that could have been expelled. But, bottom line is that he gained for the 3rd day in a row. Of course, we know that as we work with him on nippling, he will likely lose some because it takes more energy to feed like that and he'll be burning more calories than being swaddled up while someone feeds him through a tube.

This evening I worked with him on nuzzling again. The boy seems to know exactly what to do when put to breast. He seeks the nipple right out and latches on and begins suckling. We didn't do it for long, because I know it tires him out. But we did do it during a feeding so he'll associate it with a full belly. We'll continue to do this once a day for the next several days.

After the nuzzling session, I put him back in his incubator, changed his poopy diaper, got him dressed and tucked in for the night. We put the little Ohio State hat his Grandma Tina got him on along with a little outfit Dom and I found. It's nice because we can either use the clothes they have in the drawers at the NICU or bring our own in for him. The little man should be sleeping soundly now so he can get stronger and stronger each day.