So what happens next?

I'm guessing everyone is wondering what happens next? When will we get to take Cael home? What happens when we get there? What will we have to look for etc...

The nurses have already started our "teachings" if you will as far as what happens next. Basically, the only thing we're doing here is waiting for a weight gain. Cael is 100% off of oxygen and everything looks great. Overall he's a healthy little boy - he still has immature lungs however (imagine that - an immature boy :) Anyway, we'll weigh Cael tonight and I pray he's up from last night. As much as he pooped yesterday, it's no surprise his weight was down though! But that's a good thing too - the milk is moving through him.

So now what? Well, assuming he gains weight tonight (please pray that he does) Assuming he gains weight tonight, tomorrow night he will be off of the monitors 100% and will stay in our "luxury suite" with Eric and I and we'll take care of him by ourselves. So whether that's tomorrow night or the next night or the night after, that's what happens next. Right now he's doing a 90 minute car seat stress test. It's a test required of all infants born before 37 weeks. He's acting pretty hungry though so I'm not sure that he'll make it the full 90 minutes. Also waiting to hear if he's too small for the car seat...he's a pretty little guy.

So what happens when we get home? I'm guessing the question on everyone's mind is - "when do we get to come visit?" I know everyone is eager to meet Cael, but please don't rush over the day we get home. This has been quite the trip for everyone and Eric and I would really appreciate to not have unannounced visitors, and we hope that you won't be offended if we might not be up for visitors every night. And if anyone is sick or in a household with someone sick, I'm sorry, but you won't be able to visit us yet. The nurse just went through with us what to do and avoid and it came as no surprise that we wouldn't want him around any sickness. Or second hand smoke for that matter. So what about Christmas you might ask? Well...We're hoping to still go to our immediate Christmases with siblings and grandparents, however, anything beyond that will have to wait until next year. Beth (super awesome nurse of Cael's) said that we shouldn't have him around bigger crowds until at least 2 weeks after his due date. If anyone is sick when we're supposed to have Christmas, please let Eric or myself know and we won't come. Please please please don't be offended. We pray you all understand. I'm sure I sound like a crazy first time parent, but I have to say, I don't want to end up in a hospital again anytime soon. So I just pray that you all understand where we're coming from when we ask that you just let us know.

So what kind of things do we have to look for when we get home? Basically the same things that we would look for had he been a full term infant. Of course we'll probably be looking a little more closely than we would have been if he had been born closer to his due date.

Developmentally, we're told to expect him to probably be a month behind for a while. For example, he might not crawl until a month after a term newborn. That's not to say that he might be right on track with a full term baby though, we'll just have to wait and see.

Eventually he'll also need to be circumcised. They won't do that to him in the hospital here. They say to wait for two good weight gains before doing that and our primary physician will take care of it/schedule it.

He also needs to take a multi-vitamin daily for a while (nasty smelling little thing).

This is getting long so I'll try to wrap it up. How's he doing today? Could be better could be worse. He's been pretty tuckered out as Eric posted earlier. They did have to put the feeding tube back in and gave him one feeding this morning. Luckily he's been able to nurse from me the rest of the day so we haven't had to do any more tube feedings. If he has troubles with breastfeeding, it's possible to use bottles for a while. Sometimes he gets frustrated with nursing when the milk doesn't let down right away. We'll continue to pursue breastfeeding, but might give him a break from it if he's not taking to it and then we'll have to probably go visit a lactation consultant to get us back on track again. Hoping we don't have to go that route, but we'll do whatever it takes.

All righty, looks like he's too small for the seat and he got hungry so he'll have to do the test again tomorrow. That's probably ok that he got hungry since the next time he does the test he'll be in a different seat.

Feedings haven't been great today, they've been good, but not great. We'll get there though.

Good night all. Hopefully tomorrow's update is a good one and I have more pictures to post. I'm sure you'd all rather look at pictures than listen to my rambling.

"Never let go of hope. One day you will say that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back at what has passed and you will ask yourself...How did I ever get through all of that?"

Good night for now.