Updates: February 3rd - 32 days old

I am writing tonight's update from the hospital. Dom and I are in our room with Mario for the night. We are doing what they call "rooming in". Basically, we have Mario to ourselves for the night, out of the NICU. We are in a room down the hall and the nurse only comes in to bring us his bottles and then she'll do her assessment at 3am. Other than that, this is our "trial run" for when he comes home. He is off the monitors, so this is a whole new experience for us. We are both finding ourselves checking to ensure he is breathing and such quite often (pretty much any time he's not making noises). Of course, the room is equiped with monitors, oxygen, suction, etc, should we need to call the nurse for anything major and they would need anything. But, we're not planning on needing to use any of it. We will be here all night and plan to stay while they do morning rounds tomorrow to see what the residents and neonatologist have to say about the little man.

Last night Mario passed his car seat challenge. For that he was put in his car seat for 1 hour and monitored to make sure he didn't drop his oxygen saturation or heart rate levels.

He is continuing to eat well, both breast and bottle feedings. I think we've finally found a bottle that will work for going home with. We found the Gerber ones have nipples very close to the ones used here in the hospital. So, we are using those bottles every time we feed him by bottle now.

His weight tonight was up again to 5lbs, 13.3oz. Do you think he'll hit 6lbs by time he comes home? He may be pretty darn close.

Things are going very well with the little man and I don't think it will be long now before he comes home. We have some potential dates planned, but I won't say anything public just yet, to make sure we don't jinx things. Just know that they are soon, if all continues to go well.

Ok, the little man is starting to stir. It's about time for his midnight feeding and there aren't any nurses here to hand him off to :) I wonder if Daddy wants diaper duty now or at 3am. . . . .