Lastest Easton Update

Today Easton is 2 weeks old. We are still in the Special Care Nursery at St Pete's. He is doing very well and has been gaining weight each day. I think we weighs 6 pounds and 11 ounces, which is 10.5 ounces more than when he was born. We are still waiting for him to pick up the art of eating. His biggest problem with eating is the "sucking, swallowing, and breathing" sequence.

While he eats, his heart rate will decrease and his breathing will slow, which presents obvious problems. They have him on a monitor to make sure we know when this is happening. The nurses here are great and have been teaching us his indicators of when this is happening, so when he is off the monitor we will be able to identify what is going on. He tends to have the most episodes when he is first starting to feed or towards the end when he is tired or has an air bubble stuck.

To avoid over-tiring him, they currently have a "gavage" feeding tube which goes in his nose and into his belly. He bottle feeds or nurses about half of his feedings and uses the gavage feeding system the other half. The nurses and doctors all (and I mean ALL because I ask every single one of them (individually, of course) to make sure they all say the same thing...) say this problem is very common with preemies and that one day he will stop with the breathing thing and his feedings will take off. I'd like to say he is getting better at feeding, but we have had a rough couple of days and seem to have more frequent episodes. Again, the doctors have assured us this is normal, but that doesn't lessen the stress of it all.

I have also looked all over the internet and have concluded that the doctors are probably right and his problems are normal. However, we can't help but wonder if there is a different problem the doctors are missing because they are just chalking it up to his prematurity. Hopefully this is not the case and we are just being nervous parents. We have faith that he will improve and the feeding problems are just temporary. We have to keep telling ourselves that he should still be inside me for another five weeks, so we should probably give the little guy a break.

Dan and I are both totally in love with the sweet baby. I don't think either of us where prepared for how much we would instantly love him. He really is just the sweetest little baby and hardly ever cries. The nurses tend to laugh when we point that out and all mumble something along the lines of... "just wait..."

Dan and I are both a little worn out of being at the hospital and can't wait until we can go home and be a family. We don't know when he will be discharged, but are hoping it will be less than a week. As tired as we get, we still remain very thankful for his health because at seven weeks early, there could have been so many problems. We truly are blessed. I think we will both breathe a little easier when he is released and able to feed without any problems.

I think that's all for now. I will post again in a few days with an update.