Gabe Update #9 aka Progress

It will be 2 weeks tomorrow since Gabe was born and 2 weeks that he has been in the NICU. Today brought many good things. They changed up his feedings so that now he only gets a gavage feeding every third feeding instead of every other feeding. While I was with him he breastfed twice and took 2 bottles well. That is the most he has done in a 24 hour period since he has been alive. He actually woke up around feeding time and acted kind of hungry which is something he has not really done much of up until now. I love the nurse he had today. He has had her quite a few times and seems to do so well when she has him. She is leaving to go on a trip for a week and had a pretty serious talk with Gabe and let him know he had better be at home by the time she gets back from her trip. They also increased his bottle/gavage feeds to 54 ml- that is just short of 2 ounces. His blood pressure was high again today but still seems to overall be trending down so that is OK. The social worker from the hospital and I talked today and she told me that we will have to "room in" for one night before he is discharged- whenever that is. At first they had said we wouldn't have to but that was when they thought he might go home on day#4. Rooming in is where you spend the night at the hospital in a room with the baby and just make sure all goes well overnight before taking the baby home. The nice thing about that night will be that the girls will get to come up and see their brother for the first time. Sweet Carly is still praying every night that Gabe will come tomorrow. I hope she doesn't lose faith because to her it seems like it is taking forever. Anna got into a marker fight with her "boyfriend" Jacob at daycare today and apparently spent some time in time out. I laughed so hard when I picked her up and found her with a red and blue face and hands. I told the teacher how nice it was to find her doing "normal" kid things. The teacher said she as glad it was my kid because she knew I would laugh and not be mad. She was right. Someone yesterday made the comment that I should be so well rested since my baby is at the hospital and I am at home so I just wanted to clear up any misconceptions people have about having a baby in the hospital. It is exhausting! OK, enough about that. I have my 2 week OB follow up tomorrow. Although my blood pressure is much better it could certainly still use some tweaking so I hope to get that taken care of. I love my OB but I am really ready to be done there and back with my primary care physician. Kenneth and I decided that since it still looks like Gabe will not be home for awhile that he should go ahead and go back to work. There is no reason for him to be burning so much vacation when the baby is not home. When he does finally come home then Kenneth will take some more time off. We think it is the best plan for now. I hope we are right. I am proud to say I am now only 5 pounds from my pre pregnancy weight. The weight never came off this fast with the girls. I hope to continue to lose and get myself to a healthier weight than where I was when I got pregnant. Having had preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and now chronic hypertension all put me at risk for future diabetes and cardiovascular complications. I cannot fix everything but I need to modify the risk factors that I can- the biggest one being my weight. After my 6 week check up I plan to start at least walking on the treadmill 3x a week. That seems like a doable goal to me. Luckily breastfeeding should also help take some weight off. Well, it is officially quiet in this house and you know what that means. Night night for me too...